Billy Corgan Quotations | Page 2

The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That's what critics can't put their finger on.

I think the days of working with producers in the conventional sense are over for me.

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.

I just don't want to live in the past. I'm really disappointed by so many people of my generation who - in order to promote their new work, they have to constantly lean on their past. I don't want to be that type of artist... I see a lot of people out here doing really marginal music.

You will never see the four original Pumpkins on stage ever again, unless it's a Hall of Fame thing. But you would never see a tour. There's so much damage, there's no way.

To re-embrace what I once loved about music has been a warming process for me, because it's a good, earned feeling now.

For someone who's had the level of success I've had, there's been very little critical review of my work, which is pretty fascinating.

I think long and hard about what it is I'm actually trying to do, and then I kind of have to narrow my focus into that. If I don't, I'm too all over the place.

I lay a lot of blame at the feet of Dusty Baker for not being more strict about fundamentals, which I think would give the team a stronger day-to-day identity.

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

I feel like I'm always fighting not to repeat myself.

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

I've been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am.

Well, I'm known as a guitar-rock guy, you know? You're not supposed to play with synthesizers. This is not in the rulebook.

You're in a band 24 hours a day.

Hey, Christian rock, if you want to be good, stop copying U2. U2 already did it. You know what I mean? There's a lot of U2-esque Christian rock.

I always thought Kurt Cobain was the perfect embodiment of the great alternative guitar player.

I don't want to be a dead hero.

I like my home and I like the nature.

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

I was brought up Roman Catholic. I'm not even baptized.

I went to see a shaman. He put his hands on me, and I cried like a baby for an hour.

I'm just an artist. I can only do so much. I can only say so much.

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

My step-mom would tell me that she would get complaints from adults that I stared too much at them.

Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.

Radiohead and Our Lady Peace are doing the seven layers of guitar, and I kind of jumped on that before anyone else did.

Rock and Roll is still asking people like me to live up to the old guard's concept of what success is but it doesn't mean anything.

Soon you won't even have the choice to live or die as you wish!

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

To be able to put your arms around 24 years of music, it's really fun.

To me, it's the folly of man to make God human.

I don't think people buy records because of anything that happens on Facebook. They buy records cause they're friends say 'I bought this record and I love it.'

I think I'm an artistic radical, and I think I'll be recognized as one. I'm a really good musician and a songwriter, but I think my real legacy will be as a radical.

Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.

I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.

Well, what we usually do is in every city we got to, we hire a fifteen-year-old boy and we turn it up until he starts to make a funny face, then we turn it up about ten notches higher than that.

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

I think it would be very interesting to see that many people would probably be okay with paying more for services and goods that they felt were more holistically [generated]. Which means the death of the old system which rewarded people for taking advantage of one another.

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.

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

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

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

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

Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel.

Been there, done that, seen it, heard it, pissed on it.

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.

I want people to see me happy.

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.

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in the cage.

Don't judge yourself by someone else's standards. You will always lose

That's the great thing about rock n' roll: the myth is ultimately more important than the reality. And that's what you learn - you just learn to go with the mythology.

We had a wonderful time with this kind of grunge awareness, where suddenly rock was cool again. People wanted to head loud guitars. It was a great time, and I'm glad we were there. But the gimmick part has worn off.

The mythology in rock n' roll is that I'm a bit of a loose cannon. Yet I've produced more music than anybody in my generation. So how much of a loose cannon am I? But the general public believes that I'm a loose cannon, so let them believe it. I'm not going to correct them.

At some point, you protest too much they think you're guilty just because you're protesting.

I'm an experimental artist in a field that doesn't celebrate experimentation. It celebrates self-destruction, which I guess you could say is a creative endeavor.

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.

You give me a @#$%& kazoo and I'll write you a good song.

I realize I'm a mirror.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.

I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.

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

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.

I put up with the music business because I understand that I'm in the tradition, I'm in a tradition that's of far greater importance than the business I seem to be in. Everywhere I go in the world, people ask me about the business that I seem to be in, but I'm not really in that business.

We've turned into a whining society.

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.

If you don't have some sort of belief system by which to center your life, it's hard sometimes to understand why you would put up with your family.

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

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.

Injuries are nothing to be ashamed about.

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.

Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.

In 1992, with the weight of a perceived world on our shoulders, we disappeared into a parking garage to write the songs that would change the course of our lives forever. 'Siamese Dream' represents all of our dreams coming true, while the dreams of a happy band fell apart.

Fur is a contentious issue. Meat is a contentious issue. GMOs are a contentious issue. I think this whole thing going on about whether or not products should be labeled if they have GMOs in them - I, as a consumer, would like to know if I'm eating GMO food. If I choose to buy it then it's my choice.

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

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

The music business - and I guess you could say any artistic endeavor - usually rewards those who are on the leading edge of where everything is going, but you can't be too far.

Now the expectation is that, once the public decides that the artist is gentrified, the public demands that the artist stop growing. And [the public] actually puts all their energy into reasserting or re-establishing what the artist has long ago left behind. Because that's what they want. The source of creativity, the gift that's been given, be damned.

We're the worst band in America... That makes us the best.

There's been someone up here screaming 'Landslide' for the whole show... Normally we don't play 'Landslide,' but on occasion we've been known to play it... So since this person's been screaming it all show long... That just about kills the chances of me playing it tonight, or ever again.

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

That's the real endeavor: to try to create that direct conduit from the pure consciousness of your creative voice to the person who's a craftsman who can go into the world and consistently deliver new things worth paying attention to.

You can only be this high-powered mojo rock band for so long, then you just can't look people in the eye. So, we've projected our own demise.

We were just a little immature in the past. I think we actually wanted to create difficult situations for ourselves just to be able to use that emotion for stimulation.

Well, we have brought certain things upon ourselves. I've certainly brought things upon us with my mouth.

If I had spent fourteen months in a small room with Jesus, I'd want to fist fight with him.

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.

I don't know if God would agree with me, but believing in God is kind of unimportant when compared to believing in yourself. Because if you go with the idea that God gave you a mind and an ability to judge things, then he would want you to believe in yourself and not worry about believing in him. By believing in yourself you will come to the conclusion that will point to something.

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've always believed that we could reach past genre -- we didn't ride the grunge coat-tails; we've always been on our terms.

I'm Irish and I was born on St. Patrick's day. I'm lucky sevens.

There's a lot of UFO sightings in New Orleans, which isn't really too surprising. There's a lotta crazy people there. The people there lack the intelligence to know what they are seeing, so that's why the UFO's go there.

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

I have a musical ancestry as much as I have a family ancestry. Honoring those ancestors gives you access to a greater source of appreciation and information than you would have if you were just going on your own ego system.

Once a pumpkin, Always a pumpkin.

Everything about life makes me lonely.

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

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.