Top 200 Billy Corgan Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Billy Corgan

2. “Don’t judge yourself by someone else’s standards. You will always lose.”

— Billy Corgan

3. “Life is everything and nothing all at once.”

— Billy Corgan

4. “Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel.”

— Billy Corgan

5. “My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn’t like other children.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

7. “I realize I’m a mirror.”

— Billy Corgan

8. “If practice makes perfect, and no one’s perfect, then why practice?”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

10. “I feel like I’m always fighting not to repeat myself.”

— Billy Corgan

11. “As long as you have faith, you’re willing to try to take another chance. God wants you to amble toward the right spot on the horizon. The idea is that you’re willing to get up and keep moving toward that light.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

13. “I’m Irish and I was born on St. Patrick’s day. I’m lucky sevens.”

— Billy Corgan

14. “At some point, you protest too much they think you’re guilty just because you’re protesting.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

16. “All I can go on is my own value system.”

— Billy Corgan

17. “Heavy metal is a universal energy – it’s the sound of a volcano. It’s rock, it’s earth shattering. Somewhere in our primal being we understand.”

— Billy Corgan

18. “And the world so hard to understand is the world you can’t live without.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

20. “Shave your head, wear a ‘ZERO’ shirt. Take away your identity. What do you have? You still have yourself.”

— Billy Corgan

21. “The Killer in me is the Killer in you.”

— Billy Corgan

22. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

23. “Beware of those angels with their wings glued on.”

— Billy Corgan

24. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

25. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

26. “I think long and hard about what it is I’m actually trying to do, and then I kind of have to narrow my focus into that. If I don’t, I’m too all over the place.”

— Billy Corgan

27. “Once a pumpkin, Always a pumpkin.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

29. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

30. “Jesus teaches us to forgive and I’ve got to trust him on that one.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

32. “I never seemed to fit in. But it made me try to strive for things ten times harder.”

— Billy Corgan

33. “The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it’s a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.”

— Billy Corgan

34. “I get more out of life just being myself, by just being a human being. Not by being a rock star, not by being whatever. Sometimes I act like a jerk, but I think people respect me for being myself. That’s the ultimate thing about the Smashing Pumpkins.”

— Billy Corgan

35. “I don’t think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they’re fans because I’m a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.”

— Billy Corgan

36. “I’m a Pisces, and Pisces have this weird inability to be completely spontaneous. We’re too conscious of our actions. I’ve always been way too sensible for my own good.”

— Billy Corgan

37. “The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That’s what critics can’t put their finger on.”

— Billy Corgan

38. “My step-mom would tell me that she would get complaints from adults that I stared too much at them.”

— Billy Corgan

39. “Radiohead and Our Lady Peace are doing the seven layers of guitar, and I kind of jumped on that before anyone else did.”

— Billy Corgan

40. “There’s a lot of UFO sightings in New Orleans, which isn’t really too surprising. There’s a lotta crazy people there. The people there lack the intelligence to know what they are seeing, so that’s why the UFO’s go there.”

— Billy Corgan

41. “People always called the Cure gloomy, but listening to the Cure made me happy. There was something about the gloominess that gave me comfort, and I think we’re the same way.”

— Billy Corgan

42. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

43. “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.’”

— Billy Corgan

44. “About six months ago, I listened to Siamese Dream. That was the first time I’d ever really heard my own album, because I had separated from the experience of making the record. And it really moved me. It made me cry, it’s so beautiful.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

46. “I’m not going to die glamorously. I’ll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over.”

— Billy Corgan

47. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

48. “I’m by nature kind of a glum person, but I’m not a sad pathetic.”

— Billy Corgan

49. “Around the mid-’90s every hair guy who would have been in a hair-metal band got his tattoos and suddenly decided he was alternative. It just became like a thing.”

— Billy Corgan

50. “I know how stupid people can be. I’ve played in front of 5,000 people that bought a ticket to my concert, and some guy who’s bought a ticket decides he’s going to throw a bottle at my head. That’s a simple act of stupidity. That’s not even defiance.”

— Billy Corgan