Billy Corgan Quotes

There's nothing more satisfying than going to a market and meeting the person who picked the strawberries, or it's their farm that the strawberries came from, and giving them a fair value in exchange for what they're giving you.

When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that's gone before.

I don't think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they're fans because I'm a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.

Everybody likes to run around on their phones, including me, but we don't always want to hear who's sweating somewhere in some non-air-conditioned factory to create those things so that they can keep the prices down.

I'm passionate about creating new systems that are more holistic to humankind. What do I mean by that? I mean, create new systems of business so that people with ethics both exploit their goods and their gifts while not exploiting the earth, exploiting one another.

If the next record is no better than Gish, then we've failed.

I know how stupid people can be. I've played in front of 5,000 people that bought a ticket to my concert, and some guy who's bought a ticket decides he's going to throw a bottle at my head. That's a simple act of stupidity. That's not even defiance.

I grew up in a house of no love or emotion - it kind of sticks with you.

I get more out of life just being myself, by just being a human being. Not by being a rock star, not by being whatever. Sometimes I act like a jerk, but I think people respect me for being myself. That's the ultimate thing about the Smashing Pumpkins.

I'm like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!

Today is the greatest Day I've ever known Can't live for tomorrow, Tomorrow's much too long.

Compliments and criticism are all ultimately based on some form of projection.

I reached a point in my life where I felt like I was living through some old character.

I look at other members of my generation who have basically done one thing, and one thing well, and have been handsomely rewarded for it.

I want to make great songs.

As a healthy person, my breakfasts are very bland and boring. Think kind of a white pasty gruel. Or there can be an occasional banana over the top.

Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.

The reason I don't play any of the old songs is because I really honor my old band, and I think that those songs are best served within the context of that band.

One thing I've learned to appreciate as I've gotten a little older is direct forms of communication.

Everybody can close their eyes, picture a dream house or a perfect place [where] they'd like to have a picnic. But actually creating it - how do you create something from nothing? Anyone who's creative understands that that's the magic, that's the alchemy.

I was trying to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking.

We can look you in the eye and talk to you about life, heart, love rock'n'roll, whatever, but we do not have the moral authority to tell people how to vote or what to do with their bodies. We are just a rock band.

I'm attacking the pomposity that says this is more valuable than that. I'm sick of that.

And the world so hard to understand is the world you can't live without.

In the music business I am surrounded by people who don't view music as a sacred voice. They view music as something that they can use and exploit, often times lazily. They have no sense of the tradition, they have no sense of honor about those who came before and charted the path.

That's at the root of the human interaction: fair trade.

I rummage around in artistic things from the past. If you don't understand the context, they wouldn't make any sense. I rummage around in conceptual ideas of the future, but if you don't know the source of the thinking, [it] wouldn't make any sense.

Shave your head, wear a 'ZERO' shirt. Take away your identity. What do you have? You still have yourself.

To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence.

It makes me crazy to think that somebody might attack my city or any other city.

There is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic.

There's something going on right now in America, where the American spirit or character is reasserting itself around liberty. I think it's an important time, and I'm trying to document that as an artist. If I just filter what I read through the media, if I just go through what I read through the media, I'm not really in touch with the world I grew up in. I know there's a gap there, I talk to my relatives, I talk to people I meet traveling around, and their mind is on something completely different.

All I can go on is my own value system.

I don't think '90s music was as significant as '60s music in terms of changing the world, but it was significant, and I think it was similarly disillusioning when you realize the mainstream just views it as like a curiosity.

Ultimately, running a band is about the relationships you have with people.

I like my home and I like the nature.

I've had a lot of things rendered as not being effective or as some indication of my lack of sanity, only to be praised ten, fifteen, twenty years later for what I did once in this overt consciousness.

I think humankind is going to have to evolve into systems that are more transparent. Then people will be able to make more integral choices about the food they eat.

My pat line about the Cubs and payroll is that the amount of merchandise the Cubs would sell off a world series championship would more than cover for a big payroll.

I don't have to play by these rules or do these things... I can actually have my own kind of version.

Everybody I'm working with now is a friend. And I would be very, very remiss to work with anybody in the future who has not shown me who they really are.

Live simply; make compassionate choices when it comes to food.

The music is all we care about -- so if that's bad, then we're bad.

I dont think we're the type of band people look at and say, 'I want to grow up to be just like that'. We're like a train wreck.

There are people out there who are older who are cool. I want that.

Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that.

I don't think I'm before my time, I just don't think I'm in my time.

That's the age that people are exploited, exploitable, and they're easily manipulated. The problem with me is, you can't manipulate me anymore. I've seen it, I know it, I've been there. And that's partially why, particularly in America, you see issues with artists as they get older. And they like to keep it a young man's game. Because that's how they can fudge around with the rules.