Top 15 Billy Corgan Quotes

People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it.

We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.

The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.

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

My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.

When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that's gone before.

The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.

I have a hard time thinking of men trying to sing my songs, because I think my perspective is very much feminine... For me the idea of having a feminine perspective is a willingness to be vulnerable. It's very easy to cock-rock and posture. I can't help but wear my heart on my sleeve—I'm like nervous endings. That's just the way that I am and, to me, that's very female because it's not a male thing to do. A male thing to do would be to fuckin' posture.

I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.

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 and ultimately align ourselves with who we really are. Life, experiences, traumas -- whatever -- they all add up to make you some altered version of what you are. So there's this battle that goes on between what you are and what you become, and it's been very important for me to unravel what I was taught to be or what I became. and to draw a direct parallel to music -- the closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets, because I think what talent I do have is connected to that person, it's not a manipulative process, it's intuitive. You can learn about chords and guitars, but there's a piece of you that makes it individual, and it's been a slow process for me to become whatever it is that I'm supposed to be.

‘What happened when alternative music came out was authentic. It was a reflection of what was happening at the time and it had to do with authenticity. This is the reflection of the authenticity now. We’re in the reflection of it.

I’m trying to figure out how to take the instrument and have it still sound like a guitar, but put you in a different universe.

Life is everything and nothing all at once.

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

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.