Billy Corgan Quotes

I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.

I never wanted to leave the Smashing Pumpkins. That was never the plan.

People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it.

If I have resistance to something, it means there's something wrong. The resistance to me is a sign of fear.

I don't like that the government is going to manipulate the information to try to convince me that what I'm eating is not what I'm really eating. If people choose to eat cardboard because it's ten cents cheaper, then let them. That's at the root of freedom. But in the reverse, I'd like to know if what I'm eating or consuming or buying is somehow hurting or exploiting someone in another part of the planet.

If there was a simple ethic for the band, it was that we want to be able to do whatever we want to do.

We're both cat lovers [with Marilyn Manson].

I walked away from going to church when I was 8. I didn't set foot in another church until I was 28.

Wrestling is one of the last truly rebellious American things left.

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

Most great records really start with the drums.

I did 13-something years of talking to wrestlers and promoters about why they did certain things and why they booked matches a certain way and what they were thinking and whether they were satisfied with the draw. And I got a lot of insight in the business.

Stay in school. Lie to your teachers, but stay in school.

If you're really going to uncover something as an artist, you're going to come into access with parts of your personality and your psyche that are really uncomfortable to face: your own ambition, your own greed, your own avarice, your own jealousies, and anything that would get in the way of the purity of your own artistic voice.

Like any good tree that one would hope to grow, we must set our roots deep into the ground so that what is real will prosper in the Light of Love.

People always seemed to pay attention to us. I have no idea why -- there was just a presence between the four people or something.

Why is it that all non-conformists look the same?

I work differently than most people.

Thinking about the future and thinking about the past is really only a way of ignoring the present.

I want to be able to look back and think that as long as I was going this, I did the best that I could.

I've rarely done anything that's overtly self-destructive without consciously knowing what I'm doing. And then of course, the astute journalist jumps forward and says, "Why are you being calculated?" Calculated seems to assume a sinister intent. My intent is always for artistic effect.

I've become a guy who's like a complaining, whining neurotic.

Not let the child run the circus, just have that child be the source of the creative voice.

I do not think wrestling is going to save the world.

Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.

The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.

As a citizen of the great city of Chicago, I find it impossible to root against the White Sox. The White Sox organization has been much more consistent, in my lifetime at least, at putting a winning ballclub on the field.

The great thing about rock n' roll is, if you want to fight - like, fight the system, fight the man, fight the government, fight the people in front of you - it's Don Quixote all over again. You're really chasing windmills.

These days you're not just competing with the tedium, you're competing with the cellphone.

Injuries are nothing to be ashamed about.

I'm not going to die glamorously. I'll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over.

Smashing Pumpkins has never been a band about hit songs.

I've seen foreigners really shift on their view of America, and that's hard for me to take.

I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.

In our lives in a lot of ways it's all about fake. You've got people wanting things for fake reasons.