Top 200 Billy Corgan Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I think the days of working with producers in the conventional sense are over for me.”

— Billy Corgan

202. “I’ll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can’t underestimate band chemistry.”

— Billy Corgan

203. “Every year that goes by, I lose that much more motivation to play rock.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

205. “I’m passionate about creating new systems that are more holistic to humankind. What do I mean by that? I mean, create new systems of business so that people with ethics both exploit their goods and their gifts while not exploiting the earth, exploiting one another.”

— Billy Corgan

206. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

207. “My view of the world is always tempered by the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than I am.”

— Billy Corgan

208. “I’m like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!”

— Billy Corgan

209. “I’ve always believed that we could reach past genre – we didn’t ride the grunge coat-tails; we’ve always been on our terms.”

— Billy Corgan

210. “Rock and Roll is still asking people like me to live up to the old guard’s concept of what success is but it doesn’t mean anything.”

— Billy Corgan

211. “I never wanted to leave the Smashing Pumpkins. That was never the plan.”

— Billy Corgan

212. “I’ve become a guy who’s like a complaining, whining neurotic.”

— Billy Corgan

213. “To re-embrace what I once loved about music has been a warming process for me, because it’s a good, earned feeling now.”

— Billy Corgan

214. “Well, we have brought certain things upon ourselves. I’ve certainly brought things upon us with my mouth.”

— Billy Corgan

215. “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

216. “I’d reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.”

— Billy Corgan

217. “There’s nothing wrong with technology. It’s when technology is the story and not the artist, that’s the problem.”

— Billy Corgan

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

218. “We are the most beloved and hated band in the world.”

— Billy Corgan

219. “Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.”

— Billy Corgan

220. “I walked away from going to church when I was 8. I didn’t set foot in another church until I was 28.”

— Billy Corgan

221. “You will never see the four original Pumpkins on stage ever again, unless it’s a Hall of Fame thing. But you would never see a tour. There’s so much damage, there’s no way.”

— Billy Corgan

222. “I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It’s more a sensory memory.”

— Billy Corgan

223. “When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that’s gone before.”

— Billy Corgan

224. “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

225. “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.”

— Billy Corgan

226. “It’s what the mainstream does – they absorb things and they blunt the power of it. And so the next generation and the next generation has to become more shocking and more provocative in order to get any rise out of anybody.”

— Billy Corgan

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

— Billy Corgan

228. “Stay in school. Lie to your teachers, but stay in school.”

— Billy Corgan

229. “I did 13-something years of talking to wrestlers and promoters about why they did certain things and why they booked matches a certain way and what they were thinking and whether they were satisfied with the draw. And I got a lot of insight in the business.”

— Billy Corgan

230. “To be able to put your arms around 24 years of music, it’s really fun.”

— Billy Corgan

Featured in: Fun Quotes

231. “It makes me crazy to think that somebody might attack my city or any other city.”

— Billy Corgan

232. “Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.”

— Billy Corgan

233. “I want to make great songs.”

— Billy Corgan

234. “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.”

— Billy Corgan