Billy Corgan Quotations

If I worried about appearances, I wouldn't be at Cubs games.

I mean, I'm certainly not a 'teaophyte,' or whatever the word would be.

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

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.

I do not trust those who make the vaccines, or the apparatus behind it all to push it on us through fear.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It's important for people to talk and get beyond the wall of Facebook and social media.

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

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

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.

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

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

You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that's the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That's the American story, again and again.

I don't wanna play this kind of cartoon character anymore.

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.

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

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.

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.

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

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

Most of my arguments with musicians through the years have had more to do with their attitude about music, or their attitude about their own lives, or their personal responsibility. Music has never really been the big centerpiece of the fight.

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

I was fantasising about my own death, I started thinking what my funeral would be like and what music would be played, I was at that level of insanity.

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

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'.

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

I've never had coffee. I've always hated the smell. It was always tea. I was a pretty typical kid, though. I grew up drinking Lipton. I didn't know there was other tea to drink.

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.

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

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

When I've tried to reinvent the wheel, I get bashed for not doing the familiar things.

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.

A good artist is willing to die many times over. What's funny is, I've died so many times.

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

I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It's more a sensory memory.

Even if you don't believe in God, exploring fully the idea of a god or gods should pose no threat to you.

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

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

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.

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

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

In my case I don't mind playing a character that irritates people or makes people question my sanity.

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

You've got to be ready to be in a great relationship.

I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass.

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.

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'm viewed as this weird, crippled character. But you got to take your lumps.

Most great records really start with the drums.

There's a lot of days where you feel forgotten.

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

Most people don't know that wrestling came out of the circus.

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

I had such a big mouth for so long that it doesn't faze anybody anymore.

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

Well, all rock and roll is based in artifice.

You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.

We were in Japan once where they had 30 kinds of green tea. I thought there was one.

All I can go on is my own value system.

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

In my particular instance, I came from a family that didn't have anything. Everything I earned in life I made. Myself. With songs that I wrote.

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

When you actually like each other, it translates to the music.

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.'

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.

More than any audience in the world, Americans will cross their arms, stare at you and say, 'OK, whaddya got?' - no matter how many times you've proven it to them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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'm sort of like a lame, single guy in a red sports car.

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

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

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

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.

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

I believe that if the Tribune company ever tries to close down Wrigley Field that you will have a protest from every corner of the globe.

I have a saying, which is, 'Crazy is good for business.' I think rock and roll really is about being a bit crazy.

It's a simple formula for me now, I don't play any song I don't want to play.

You just reach a point sometimes with somebody where it just doesn't work.

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.

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

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

I'm prepared to spend the rest of my life playing clubs, if that means I'm playing music that I believe in.

People think I take some sort of masochistic pleasure out of putting out music that's gonna be unpopular.

Saturn Return is just the return of your planets to their original position.

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

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

You have to keep adapting to the times. If you kind of go with it, it can kind of fun.

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.

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.

I didn't grow up with my mother, and so losing her for real was like, some sort of latent childhood, some sort of unresolved issue. When she left for real, it was sort of like, I was done.

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.