Top 306 Quotes & Sayings by Billy Corgan - Page 3

Most great records really start with the drums.

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.

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.

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

Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 work differently than most people.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Once a pumpkin, Always a pumpkin.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Beware of those angels with their wings glued on.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

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

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