"You don't choose to write a song about pain-it just happens."
--Billy Corgan
"The point is to let the music be itself. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then it's bullsh*t."
--Billy Corgan
"I want to make great songs."
--Billy Corgan
Billy on Guitar: "I just look inside myself and try to figure out what I want to say onguitar. Sometimes it meansturning it down and playing solo; sometimes it means throwing the guitar across the stage."
Billy on lyrics: "When I first started writing songs, I felt I had to be very honest and I really hated my lyrics because I was uncomfortable with the honestly in them. You could draw nothing out of thembecause you have to hear only my very specific opinion. Then I went totally theopposite of that, to the point of ambiguity where I didn't even know what the songs were. It eventually worked itself out to where I know what the songs mean, and I think there's enough in there that if youwant to connect the dots, you'll come up with something. They're not vacant lyrics and they're not meant to say anything in the sense of me trying to get a messae across. The message is there for me-and I found that the most satisfactory route."
"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."
--Billy Corgan
"Some people want to express that apathy with noise and brutality...It's the want to transcend all that, to find some deeper essence in life, that drives me."
--Billy Corgan
"My earliest memory is of being different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children."
--Billy Corgan
"My view of the world is always tempered by the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than I am."
--Billy Corgan
"To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy, mortal existance."
--Billy Corgan
"Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band- it was either going to be a big band or no band."
--Billy Corgan
"It rumpled the feathers of other local bands that we were getting gigs that they wanted."
--Billy Corgan
"People always seemed to pay attention to us. I have no idea why- there was just a presence between the four people or something."
--Billy Corgan
"We felt we were ignored. We felt we were outsiders and then, when the hostility started about us getting gigs, it just reinforced that."
--Billy Corgan
"If there was a simple ethic for the band, it was that we want to be able to do whatever we want to do."
--Billy Corgan
"I think it's probably because we didn't do dumb things like, 'Wave our hand in the air' that we suffered a little, but I would rather suffer and not be a fool."
--Billy Corgan
"I want our music to come across like someone is whispering into your ear and going right inside your brain."
--Billy Corgan
"I have a hard time thinking of men trying to sing my songs, because I think my perspective is definitely feminine."
--Billy Corgan
"We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down."
--D'Arcy
"The close I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets."
--Billy Corgan
"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."
--Billy Corgan
"I've always believed that we could reach past our genre- we didn't ride the grunge coat-tails, we've always been on our terms."
--Billy Corgan
"I've become a guy who's like a complaining, whining neurotic."
--Billy Corgan
"I recognize what the other threehave to go through personally tobe in this band and I'm grateful that they've had enough faith in my vision to stick with me."
--Billy Corgan
"Every year that goes by, I lose that much more motivation to play rock."
--Billy Corgan
"If you've sold over a million records, you are not punk rock, you are milking the system for everything that it's worth."
--Billy Corgan
"Physically, we can pretty much overpower anybody as a band."
--Billy Corgan
"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."
--Billy Corgan
"To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy mortal existence."
--Billy Corgan
"Say you write a song about a chandelier and it gives off light, and the light is red and red reminds you of the color you're not supposed to wear around a bull, so you name the song Cow."
--Billy Corgan on his song titles
James: Good evening Oakland!
Billy: James, we're not in Oakland.
James: Good evening, San Francisco!
Billy: We're not in San Francisco either. (to the crowd:) See, there is something many of you may not know about James. He's a robot, and when we're on tour, we kinda forget to reprogram him sometimes so he gets confused easy. That's also why he smells so bad since we can't give him a shower.
--Billy and James December 16, 1996 at a show in San Jose, CA
"If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, then why practice?"
--Billy Corgan
"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."
--Billy from SPIN magazine
"I guess we should apologize now for making you all miss the Super Bowl. If it makes you feel any better, um, in the second quarter the players decided that they were all going to choose a path of non-violence and they all gave up football. So the game was suspended anyway so you're not missing anything."
--Billy Corgan
"Are you ready to rock and roll? Well you came to the wrong place."
--Billy at Tower Records
"I fucking TOLD you this town sucks! Did I fucking TELL you? I fucking TOLD you. I didn't WANT to play here, and NOW these fuckers want my fucking autograph!"
--Billy at Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1994
"I'm not going to die glamorously. I'll probably be eating a twinkie, take a bite, and fall over."
--Billy Corgan
"My mother came to a Smashing Pumpkins gig once and I was wearing a dress... she was very upset. She said, "Everyone's gonna think you're a fag.' I said, "well, they already think I'm an asshole.""
--Billy Corgan
"I said rat in a cage, not monkey on a fucking wire."
--Billy Corgan
"How cute. A Big Bird with a zero on his chest...I am against the...disgrace of innocent Sesame Street dolls. I was molested by Big Bird himself once...when I saw that thing flying at me, it brought back a lot of painful memories...I can't tell you what he did to me...But he does have that long beak."
--Billy Corgan
"I was known for throwing knives."
--D'Arcy