Billy corgan quotes

People try to make a big deal, like I don't want to play my old songs. That's not it. I don't want to play my old songs if that's my only option. That's a different thing.

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

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.

I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery. It's a journey of recovery. It's a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It's already there.

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

You could have a zillion Facebook followers. Those people don't buy records. It's about a hundred to one...Record companies, they don't have any money so they see social media as the free marketing...So,...'Billy, light yourself on fire and stand upside down, and that'll market the record'. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I don't think people by records because of anything that happens on Facebook. They buy records cause they're friends say 'I bought this record and I love it'.

Once a pumpkin, Always a pumpkin.

I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.

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.

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

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.

Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves.

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

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

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.

I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.

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.

Most great records really start with the drums.

I had concussions as a kid playing football and basketball, and know what it feels like and to have someone say 'Just rub some dirt on it, and get back in there.'

Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song 'Cow.'

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.

I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that.

I never seemed to fit in. But it made me try to strive for things ten times harder.

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.

I'm definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it's not very productive to come in with nothing.

James, that's a bad situation. I'm not saying it's not repairable, but it's pretty far. When you go from being in one of the best bands in the world to some cover band... as far as I'm concerned, he was playing down at the pub.

What bothers me is when music becomes entertainment. Of course, music is supposed to be entertaining, but go back to any period of time - music had a cultural significance on different levels, whether it was folk music, it was the news of the village, or it had to do with the rites of passage.

I hate how in magazine pictures, they always stick me somewhere in the back. It means they don't think I'm the cute one.

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

I'm from a lower middle class background; all my family were immigrants.

We need to get back to a level of social responsibility that we haven't seen for a long time.

The weird nihilism that permeates Mellon Collie is extremely relevant to what's going on right now. So many kids are intelligent and articulate, but they don't know what to do with themselves.

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.

I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want...and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.

All humans are part male and part female. The other side must be explored to gain complete understanding ofourselves and the world we live in. Forme, the idea of having a feminine perspective is a willingness to be vulnerable.

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

I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill.

Somewhere between the intellectual idea of why we're attracted to certain things and the pragmatic reality is some form of ever-evolving truth.

The things I'm guided to do are really strange to me.

Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n' roll.

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

The title of a song is like the wrapping on a present.

I started thinking that if post modernism is about people opening up all their skeletons, I'm going the other way. I don't want anyone knowing anything about me anymore.

Beware of those angels with their wings glued on.

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

Instead of taking the 'I'm cool, I hope you adore me' path (with my music), I chose the path of how to connect. I think that's the reason a lot of people feel a deeper connection with our band than other bands, and I also feel that's why people polarize on us. If you don't get it, it seems preposterous; if you do get it, it's really heavy - it has a weight to it.

I want people to see me happy.

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.

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

Heavy metal is a universal energy -- it's the sound of a volcano. It's rock, it's earth shattering. Somewhere in our primal being we understand.

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.

What most people do is try to find a comfortable persona that they're in alignment with and the public likes and appreciates them for.

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 don't have any sentimental notion about how people are going to remember me.

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

In the beginning, though, I have to admit that I did have a chip on my shoulder. I did want to prove everyone wrong. But after I went through the process and came out the other side, it wasn't about anyone else.

I was raised a Christian, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian now. I think when I was younger it was easier to focus on the negative, nihilist vision... this is sort of picking up on the other half of the body, which is God and white light.

The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.

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

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.

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 usually wake up far after breakfast. That's as much as you're going to find out about my dietary requirements other than marijuana and vodka.

Twenty-eight to 31 is the tough period. You have to be really careful because it's so cataclysmic, so life-altering. People do really dramatic things like get married, or they'll get divorced. Your chances of committing suicide go way up. It's basically psychic death. You see the signs of it around 27, and you're still on the out-end of it around 31. Everyone I've talked to who's gone through that and come out the other side walks out of it like, "MY LIFE IS GREAT".

The difficulty, if you're in the world - and this is for anybody - is the eventual disappointment that comes with having to meet other versions of reality. Imposed systems that ask you to compromise or sacrifice things which you consider holy or sacred.

Where is this great love for rock and roll that existed for 50 or 60 years?

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

Actually, I was having dinner with Michael [Stipe, of R.E.M.] when our second album went platinum, which up until that point was the highest success we'd ever had. And he turned to me during dinner and said, 'Welcome to the deep waters, kid.' I'll never forget that.

Being in a rock band is just an excuse not to get a job

I didn't find Jesus. He's been there the whole time.

I created a paradigm by which I could succeed, and up until recently it was the only way I could do it. I could not take the brunt of standing in the light of my own work. There was a Faustian bargain I could not make. I could have you mock me for wearing funny clothes that I could deal with. But I couldn't deal with actually standing in the light of my own musical power. That's the difference now. It's like, okay, no more of that, you're done.

Your basic person wants to talk about material culture, internet culture. I think about God, cats, nature.

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.

For a 6-foot-3 guy with no hair and a whiny voice, I've done all right.

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.

Music is supposed to be interwoven into the fabric of society; it is not supposed to be a plaything that is there to serve the population's titillation of the moment.

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

My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.

Like any form of death, at some point you just have to get up and say yeah I'll take it, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen and sorta chop your head off. It's easy to avoid all that...there's always another moment, another girl, another high, another drug, there's always something to distract you.

My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let's all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I'm not that kind of guy. It's an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it's not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.

We've turned into a whining society.

I don't have a problem with 'Idol' or 'X Factor,' I have a problem with when those things are not given the proper contextual hue.

I have a hard time thinking of men trying to sing my songs, because I think my perspective is definitely feminine.

Jesus teaches us to forgive and I've got to trust him on that one.

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.

I use music as some kind of weird salvation to get away from life

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

I was part of a generation that changed the world - and it was taken over by poseurs.

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.

My mother and I parting company at four years old is a recurring theme; although it's not symbolically necessarily present, it's present in all my relationships.

I often have deer on my property and there's a fox and owls. You're not going to see that in the city.

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

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.

There's a difference between being a poseur and being someone who's so emotionally challenged they're kind of just doing their best to show you what they've got.

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.

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

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.

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

If you don't fit into this kind of like gossipy, trendy, Web-hit thingy, you're relegated to sort of second-class celebrity status.

If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice?

Gish was the best representation of where we were at the time.

Calm, open debate, and logical thought drive strength to its maximum effectiveness.

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.

The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.

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.

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.

A missive to all you metal bands, the world is totally over the rock thing. Rock is deader than it's ever been.

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.

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

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

We love cats more than we love women [with Marilyn Manson].

There's nothing wrong with technology. It's when technology is the story and not the artist, that's the problem.

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.

The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it.

Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.

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

As long as you have faith, you're willing to try to take another chance. God wants you to amble toward the right spot on the horizon. The idea is that you're willing to get up and keep moving toward that light.

Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do.