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If You're Really Going To Uncover Something As An Artist, You're Going To Come Into Access With Parts Of Your Personality And Your Psyche That Are Really Uncomfortable To Face: Your Own Ambition, Your Own Greed, Your Own Avarice, Your Own Jealousies, And Anything That Would Get In The Way Of The Purity Of Your Own Artistic Voice.

-Billy Corgan

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If You're Really Going

Billy Corgan

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If You're Really Going To Uncover Something As An Artist, You're Going To Come Into Access With Parts Of Your Personality And Your Psyche That Are Really Uncomfortable To Face: Your Own Ambition, Your Own Greed, Your Own Avarice, Your Own Jealousies, And Anything That Would Get In The Way Of The Purity Of Your Own Artistic Voice.

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I'm Like The Fugitive, Running From The One-armed Indie-rock Community!

Most Of My Arguments With Musicians Through The Years Have Had More To Do With Their Attitude About Music, Or Their Attitude About Their Own Lives, Or Their Personal Responsibility. Music Has Never Really Been The Big Centerpiece Of The Fight.

My Earliest Memory Is Of Feeling Different. My Parents Told Me That I Wasn't Like Other Children.

Most People Are Living Lives Of Sort Of Survival. And Constantly Posing An Existential Crisis, Either Through Fantasy Or Oblivion, Really Has Been Pretty Much Explored In Rock And Roll. At Least In The Western Version Of Rock N' Roll.

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.

I Dont Think We're The Type Of Band People Look At And Say, 'i Want To Grow Up To Be Just Like That'. We're Like A Train Wreck.

As A Citizen Of The Great City Of Chicago, I Find It Impossible To Root Against The White Sox. The White Sox Organization Has Been Much More Consistent, In My Lifetime At Least, At Putting A Winning Ballclub On The Field.

It Seems To Me That References To Bands Like Black Sabbath And Led Zeppelin Meant More To Me A Year Ago And All Those Old Things Are Totally Losing Importance.

If I Have Resistance To Something, It Means There's Something Wrong. The Resistance To Me Is A Sign Of Fear.

You Have To Keep Adapting To The Times. If You Kind Of Go With It, It Can Kind Of Fun.

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.

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.

I Always Thought Kurt Cobain Was The Perfect Embodiment Of The Great Alternative Guitar Player.

The Deeper I Get Into My Life As A Musician, I'm Discovering That It Becomes Less And Less About Other People, And More About What I Want To Do. And That's A Good Place To Be.

There's Nothing Wrong With Technology. It's When Technology Is The Story And Not The Artist, That's The Problem.

I've Become A Guy Who's Like A Complaining, Whining Neurotic.

For Someone Who's Had The Level Of Success I've Had, There's Been Very Little Critical Review Of My Work, Which Is Pretty Fascinating.

Critical Spirit

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.

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've Spent A Lot Of Time Thinking About This. I Don't Think People By 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 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.

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.

Intoxicated With The Madness I'm In Love With My Sadness Bullshit Beggars, Enchanted Kingdom Fashion Victims Through Their Charcoaled Teeth

People Try To Make A Big Deal, Like I Don't Want To Play My Old Songs. That's Not It. I Don't Want To Play My Old Songs If That's My Only Option. That's A Different Thing.

It's About The Girlfriend Who Left Me Last Year. I Tried To Put All My Anger In Those Words, Even Though I'm Just As Much To Blame For The Break-up. 'soma' Is Based On The Idea That A Love Relationship Is Almost The Same As Opium: It Slowly Puts You To Sleep, It Soothes You, And Gives You The Illusion Of Sureness And Security. Very Deceivable.

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.

My Step-mom Would Tell Me That She Would Get Complaints From Adults That I Stared Too Much At Them.

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.

The Reason I Don't Play Any Of The Old Songs Is Because I Really Honor My Old Band, And I Think That Those Songs Are Best Served Within The Context Of That Band.

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.

Every Year That Goes By, I Lose That Much More Motivation To Play Rock.

I Don't Have Any Sentimental Notion About How People Are Going To Remember Me.

If You Don't Have Some Sort Of Belief System By Which To Center Your Life, It's Hard Sometimes To Understand Why You Would Put Up With Your Family.

I Had Such A Big Mouth For So Long That It Doesn't Faze Anybody Anymore.

When You Present People With Things From The Heart And From The Soul, They Make Better Choices: They Make Better Choices About Their Bodies, They Make Better Choices About Their Partners, They Make Better Choices About The Environment.

Radiohead And Our Lady Peace Are Doing The Seven Layers Of Guitar, And I Kind Of Jumped On That Before Anyone Else Did.

Wrestling Is One Of The Last Truly Rebellious American Things Left.

We Can Look You In The Eye And Talk To You About Life, Heart, Love Rock'n'roll, Whatever, But We Do Not Have The Moral Authority To Tell People How To Vote Or What To Do With Their Bodies. We Are Just A Rock Band.

I'm Sort Of Like A Lame, Single Guy In A Red Sports Car.

We've Turned Into A Whining Society.

I Never Wanted To Leave The Smashing Pumpkins. That Was Never The Plan.

I'm By Nature Kind Of A Glum Person, But I'm Not A Sad Pathetic

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.

If The Next Record Is No Better Than Gish, Then We've Failed.

My Version, Of Course, Is Not This Flag-waving, Let's All Get On The Jesus Train And Ride Out Of Hell. I'm Not That Kind Of Guy. It's An Embrace That Life Is Good, Worth Living And Yeah, It's Not Easy, But There Are More Pluses Than Minuses.

I'm From A Lower Middle Class Background; All My Family Were Immigrants.

I Do Not Trust Those Who Make The Vaccines, Or The Apparatus Behind It All To Push It On Us Thru Fear.

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.

These Days You're Not Just Competing With The Tedium, You're Competing With The Cellphone.

In My Case I Don't Mind Playing A Character That Irritates People Or Makes People Question My Sanity.

The Great Thing About Rock N' Roll Is, If You Want To Fight - Like, Fight The System, Fight The Man, Fight The Government, Fight The People In Front Of You - It's Don Quixote All Over Again. You're Really Chasing Windmills.

I'm Definitely Responsible For Coming In With Some Basic Chord Changes, Or Ideas. Everybody In The Band Looks To Me To Come Up With The Basic Seed, So It's Not Very Productive To Come In With Nothing.

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.

Been There, Done That, Seen It, Heard It, Pissed On It.

Been There Done That

I Want To Be Able To Look Back And Think That As Long As I Was Going This, I Did The Best That I Could.

You Know Americans Are Obsessed With Life And Death And Rebirth, That's The American Cycle. You Know, Awakening, Tragic, Horrible Death And Then Phoenix Rising From The Ashes. That's The American Story, Again And Again.

People Think I Take Some Sort Of Masochistic Pleasure Out Of Putting Out Music That's Gonna Be Unpopular.

People Always Seemed To Pay Attention To Us. I Have No Idea Why -- There Was Just A Presence Between The Four People Or Something.

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.

My Mother And I Parting Company At Four Years Old Is A Recurring Theme; Although It's Not Symbolically Necessarily Present, It's Present In All My Relationships.

Everybody Likes To Run Around On Their Phones, Including Me, But We Don't Always Want To Hear Who's Sweating Somewhere In Some Non-air-conditioned Factory To Create Those Things So That They Can Keep The Prices Down.

Calm, Open Debate, And Logical Thought Drive Strength To Its Maximum Effectiveness.

I Realize I'm A Mirror.

I'm Not Interested In Pop Art.

You Have To Be Willing To Deal With The Ups And Downs Of The Music, The Ups And Downs Of The Audience.

I've Seen Foreigners Really Shift On Their View Of America, And That's Hard For Me To Take.

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.

Somewhere Between The Intellectual Idea Of Why We're Attracted To Certain Things And The Pragmatic Reality Is Some Form Of Ever-evolving Truth.

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 Have A Musical Ancestry As Much As I Have A Family Ancestry. Honoring Those Ancestors Gives You Access To A Greater Source Of Appreciation And Information Than You Would Have If You Were Just Going On Your Own Ego System.

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.'

I Feel Completely Free To Do Whatever I Want And How I Want To Do It. I Feel Unburdened By My Past.

For A 6-foot-3 Guy With No Hair And A Whiny Voice, I've Done All Right.

The Smashing Pumpkins Was Never Meant To Be A Small Band. It Was Going To Either Be A Big Band, Or A No Band.

Injuries Are Nothing To Be Ashamed About.

The Music Is All We Care About -- So If That's Bad, Then We're Bad.

That's The Real Endeavor: To Try To Create That Direct Conduit From The Pure Consciousness Of Your Creative Voice To The Person Who's A Craftsman Who Can Go Into The World And Consistently Deliver New Things Worth Paying Attention To.

We Don't Make Music For People To Take Drugs To, We Make Music For People To Live Their Life.

We're The Worst Band In America... That Makes Us The Best.

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.

James, That's A Bad Situation. I'm Not Saying It's Not Repairable, But It's Pretty Far. When You Go From Being In One Of The Best Bands In The World To Some Cover Band... As Far As I'm Concerned, He Was Playing Down At The Pub.

Rock & Roll Is Not About What You Play, It's About How You Play It.

That Was A Terrible Super Bowl, I Have To Say. I Mean You Got The Big Peyton Manning Walk Off Into The Sunset Win, But What A Shnoozo.

My Father Was A Guitar Player, And I Was Raised With A Super High Standard Of What Good Guitar Playing Was.

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.

You've Got To Be Ready To Be In A Great Relationship.

Great Relationship

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.'

Even If You Don't Believe In God, Exploring Fully The Idea Of A God Or Gods Should Pose No Threat To You.

I Walked Away From Going To Church When I Was 8. I Didn't Set Foot In Another Church Until I Was 28.

Going To Church

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.

The Point Is To Let The Music Be Itself. If It Doesn't Mean Anything To You, Then It's Bullsh*t.

I Think Humankind Is Going To Have To Evolve Into Systems That Are More Transparent. Then People Will Be Able To Make More Integral Choices About The Food They Eat.

There's Been Someone Up Here Screaming 'landslide' For The Whole Show... Normally We Don't Play 'landslide,' But On Occasion We've Been Known To Play It... So Since This Person's Been Screaming It All Show Long... That Just About Kills The Chances Of Me Playing It Tonight, Or Ever Again.

It's Wonderful To Read Interviews By Old Blues Guys - They Talk About All Their Influences, They Talk About Who Taught Them How To Play, And Who They Saw, And How They Were Determined To Play That Way.

Actually, I Was Having Dinner With Michael [stipe, Of R.e.m.] When Our Second Album Went Platinum, Which Up Until That Point Was The Highest Success We'd Ever Had. And He Turned To Me During Dinner And Said, 'welcome To The Deep Waters, Kid.' I'll Never Forget That.

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.

Instead Of Taking The 'i'm Cool, I Hope You Adore Me' Path (with My Music), I Chose The Path Of How To Connect. I Think That's The Reason A Lot Of People Feel A Deeper Connection With Our Band Than Other Bands, And I Also Feel That's Why People Polarize On Us. If You Don't Get It, It Seems Preposterous; If You Do Get It, It's Really Heavy - It Has A Weight To It.

All I Can Go On Is My Own Value System.

And The World So Hard To Understand Is The World You Can't Live Without.

What Bothers Me Is When Music Becomes Entertainment. Of Course, Music Is Supposed To Be Entertaining, But Go Back To Any Period Of Time - Music Had A Cultural Significance On Different Levels, Whether It Was Folk Music, It Was The News Of The Village, Or It Had To Do With The Rites Of Passage.

I Met Scott Stapp When The Band Was First Coming Up, Great Guy. I Haven't Seen Him For Years, But A Great Guy.

At Some Point, You Protest Too Much They Think You're Guilty Just Because You're Protesting.

When I've Tried To Reinvent The Wheel, I Get Bashed For Not Doing The Familiar Things.

Familiar Things

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.

I Really Think It's A White, Bourgeois Idea To Pretend That You Don't Have Influences. It Seems To Be The Obsession Strictly Of White People In College.

It Makes Me Crazy To Think That Somebody Might Attack My City Or Any Other City.

I Do Not Think Wrestling Is Going To Save The World.

We Weren't Like Mates Who Decided To Form A Band. The Other Three Met Me Because They Were Interested In Being In The Band That I Was Starting.

I Went To See A Shaman. He Put His Hands On Me, And I Cried Like A Baby For An Hour.

We Were Just A Little Immature In The Past. I Think We Actually Wanted To Create Difficult Situations For Ourselves Just To Be Able To Use That Emotion For Stimulation.

Difficult Situations

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.

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.

I Often Have Deer On My Property And There's A Fox And Owls. You're Not Going To See That In The City.

We Need To Get Back To A Level Of Social Responsibility That We Haven't Seen For A Long Time.

I Mean, I'm Certainly Not A 'teaophyte,' Or Whatever The Word Would Be.

What Has Gone On In My Childhood, And The Personal Problems That We've Had In The Band, Have Given A Lot Of People Hope. (it Shows) If You Keep Your Nose Pointed Straight You Can Actually Get Somewhere -- To A Happy Place.

Well, I'm Known As A Guitar-rock Guy, You Know? You're Not Supposed To Play With Synthesizers. This Is Not In The Rulebook.

I'd Reached A Point Where There Was A Direct Conflict Between What I Was Trying To Be And Who I Really Was.

The Killer In Me Is The Killer In You.

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.

I Was Raised A Christian, But I Wouldn't Call Myself A Christian Now. I Think When I Was Younger It Was Easier To Focus On The Negative, Nihilist Vision... This Is Sort Of Picking Up On The Other Half Of The Body, Which Is God And White Light.

Beware Of Those Angels With Their Wings Glued On.

In A Weird Kind Of Way, Music Has Afforded Me An Idealism And Perfectionism That I Could Never Attain As Me.

Well, We Have Brought Certain Things Upon Ourselves. I've Certainly Brought Things Upon Us With My Mouth.

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.

My View Of The World Is Always Tempered By The Fact That There Are People Who Are Less Fortunate Than I Am.

I Look At Other Members Of My Generation Who Have Basically Done One Thing, And One Thing Well, And Have Been Handsomely Rewarded For It.

In My Corgan Brain, I've Decided It's Almost As Simple As 'all You Need Is Love.' Almost.

I Mean My Point As An Artist Is I'm On My Own Little Weird Journey Across The Sky Here And Whether Or Not Anybody's Listening, Or Listening To The Degree I Would Like Them To, At The End Of The Day Has To Be An Inconsequential Thing Because I Can't Chase This Culture.

Well, All Rock And Roll Is Based In Artifice.

Stay In School. Lie To Your Teachers, But Stay In School.

When You Move Artistically, The Natural Inclination Is To Denounce Everything That's Gone Before.

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.

To Re-embrace What I Once Loved About Music Has Been A Warming Process For Me, Because It's A Good, Earned Feeling Now.

Shave Your Head, Wear A 'zero' Shirt. Take Away Your Identity. What Do You Have? You Still Have Yourself.

I Didn't Find Jesus. He's Been There The Whole Time.

I'm Very Disappointed In My Country Right Now, Because I Think We've Kind Of Lost Our Moral Compass.

I Believe That If The Tribune Company Ever Tries To Close Down Wrigley Field That You Will Have A Protest From Every Corner Of The Globe.

What Most People Do Is Try To Find A Comfortable Persona That They're In Alignment With And The Public Likes And Appreciates Them For.

I'm Viewed As This Weird, Crippled Character. But You Got To Take Your Lumps.

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.

To Be Able To Put Your Arms Around 24 Years Of Music, It's Really Fun.

I Use Music As Some Kind Of Weird Salvation To Get Away From Life

I'm Irish And I Was Born On St. Patrick's Day. I'm Lucky Sevens.

Everybody I'm Working With Now Is A Friend. And I Would Be Very, Very Remiss To Work With Anybody In The Future Who Has Not Shown Me Who They Really Are.

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.

I'm Attacking The Pomposity That Says This Is More Valuable Than That. I'm Sick Of That.

I Grew Up In A House Of No Love Or Emotion - It Kind Of Sticks With You.

Once A Pumpkin, Always A Pumpkin.

I'm Not Going To Die Glamorously. I'll Probably Be Eating A Twinkie, Take A Bite, And Fall Over.

In 1992, With The Weight Of A Perceived World On Our Shoulders, We Disappeared Into A Parking Garage To Write The Songs That Would Change The Course Of Our Lives Forever. 'siamese Dream' Represents All Of Our Dreams Coming True, While The Dreams Of A Happy Band Fell Apart.

I Think God Is The Most Unexplored Territory In Rock And Roll Music.

Rock In The Mainstream Culture Has Lost A Lot Of Its Mojo.

Mainstream Culture

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.

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.

People Act Like Nirvana Invented Grunge; They Just Took It And Personified It.

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 Are People Out There Who Are Older Who Are Cool. I Want That.

Do I Belong In The Conversation About The Best Artists In The World? My Answer Is Yes, I Do.

My Pat Line About The Cubs And Payroll Is That The Amount Of Merchandise The Cubs Would Sell Off A World Series Championship Would More Than Cover For A Big Payroll.

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.

Compliments And Criticism Are All Ultimately Based On Some Form Of Projection.

I Don't Wanna Play This Kind Of Cartoon Character Anymore.

I Don't Have To Play By These Rules Or Do These Things... I Can Actually Have My Own Kind Of Version.

I Work Differently Than Most People.

I'm Prepared To Spend The Rest Of My Life Playing Clubs, If That Means I'm Playing Music That I Believe In.

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.

Sometimes People Just Like Being Around Each Other, And Good Things Come Out Of That.

We Had A Wonderful Time With This Kind Of Grunge Awareness, Where Suddenly Rock Was Cool Again. People Wanted To Head Loud Guitars. It Was A Great Time, And I'm Glad We Were There. But The Gimmick Part Has Worn Off.

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.

I Like My Home And I Like The Nature.

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've Thought Many Times, 'i Can't Write This,' But On My Own Little Planet I Found The Courage To Write It Because It Was True. I Put Aside Fear Of Father Being Angry With Me. It's Hard Though; The World Pales In Comparison With The Stature Of A Parent. In Some Small-consolation Way, My Parents Feel I'm Helping People By Giving Them Something To Identify With. They Feel Proud In A Sort Of Reverse Way. My Mom's Proud Of The Fact That Lots Of Kids Look Up To Me.

I've Been Too Productive For Too Long, And Despite What Anybody Wants To Strip Away From Me, I Am Influential. I Am.

I Think The Days Of Working With Producers In The Conventional Sense Are Over For Me.

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 Our Lives In A Lot Of Ways It's All About Fake. You've Got People Wanting Things For Fake Reasons.

Destruction Is A True Sign Of Devotion. As I Always Tell My Girlfriend When She Threatens To Kill Me. 'you Should Kill Me And It Would Tell Me That You Love Me.

I Grew Up In The Suburbs And Basically Associate The Suburbs With Cultural Death.

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".

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.

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.

Don't Judge Yourself By Someone Else's Standards. You Will Always Lose

Indie World Won't Have Me, And Mainstream World Treats Me Like An Alien, But Here I Am Still Floating Between These Two Worlds.

One Thing I've Learned To Appreciate As I've Gotten A Little Older Is Direct Forms Of Communication.

You Give Me A @#$%& Kazoo And I'll Write You A Good Song.

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.

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.

I Never Seemed To Fit In. But It Made Me Try To Strive For Things Ten Times Harder.

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.

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.

The Desire To Hit A Big Home Run Is Dominating The Music Business.

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.

If There Was A Simple Ethic For The Band, It Was That We Want To Be Able To Do Whatever We Want To Do.

We Have A Problem With Any Labels That People Try To Hang On Us, Because All It Does Is Drag You Down.

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.

Thinking About The Future And Thinking About The Past Is Really Only A Way Of Ignoring The Present.

I Want To Make Great Songs.

I Feel Like I'm Always Fighting Not To Repeat Myself.

Always Fighting

I Lay A Lot Of Blame At The Feet Of Dusty Baker For Not Being More Strict About Fundamentals, Which I Think Would Give The Team A Stronger Day-to-day Identity.

When Alternative Music - Which Is Supposed To Be The Standard-bearer Of Where White Rock Is Headed - Becomes Either Too Cute Or Too Manufactured, That's Just Really Not Good.

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