Latest Billy Corgan Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Musical, Done, Succeed

  Source: pitchfork.com

• 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".

  Billy Corgan

  Suicide, People, Chance

  Source: pitchfork.com

• As far as a theoretical point of view for my generation, I'm probably the most successful theoretician. I mean, double albums and concepts and dresses and major disasters and wonderful successes and yet you don't see the critical review of my work. Why? Because it's all focused on the persona. Billy Corgan. But I get to sort of jump in and be Billy Corgan. But then I get to sort of jump back out and be like, sensitive man in the corner.

  Billy Corgan

  Mean, Successful, Men

  Source: pitchfork.com

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Girl, Drug, Moments

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I think I kind of approached music with this sort of, like, weird thing where I kinda set myself up where I could kinda be myself but not really. I kinda had a backdoor out. So if you criticized me, I kinda had my defenses working. And the problem is that some people seize on that as inauthenticity, which is understandable. So that's painful because it's not that you're being inauthentic...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.

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, People, Kind

  Source: pitchfork.com

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Character, Thinking, Artist

  Source: www.alternativenation.net

• Billy [Corgan] and I used to spend quite a lot of time together in Los Angeles, when I first moved there.

  Billy Corgan

  Together, Firsts, Los Angeles

  Source: archive.alternativenation.net

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Marijuana, Wake Up, Breakfast

  Source: archive.alternativenation.net

• As a healthy person, my breakfasts are very bland and boring. Think kind of a white pasty gruel. Or there can be an occasional banana over the top.

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, White, Healthy

  Source: archive.alternativenation.net

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

  Billy Corgan

  Cat, Manson

  Source: archive.alternativenation.net

• We're both cat lovers [with Marilyn Manson].

  Billy Corgan

  Cat, Lovers, Manson

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Creativity, Artist, Long Ago

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Rewards, Artistic, Endeavor

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Past, Thinking, Ideas

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, My Time

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Years, Twenties, Fifteen

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Self, Knowing, Done

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, People, Artistic

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, Too Much, Guilty

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Artist, Self, Creative

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Believe, Rocks, Generations

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Reality, Rocks, Important

  "A Conversation With Billy Corgan Part II". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Mean, Thinking, People

  "A Conversation with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Thinking, Gmo Foods, Gmos

  "A Conversation with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• 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.

  Billy Corgan

  Hurt, Government, Roots

  "A Conversation with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.