"You can't be greater than Elvis, change things as much as the Beatles, or be as original as Led Zeppelin. All you can do is rip them off." "We used to compete with Nirvana. That was good. That was real. That was viscerally good. Now we compete with imitation-Nirvana. There's nothing good in that. ...It's really sad." "For a 6-foot-3 guy with no hair and a whiny voice, I´ve done all right." "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 to their bodies. We're just a rock band." "The thing that makes it all worth it is when somebody comes up and says 'I had a really hard time in my life and your album really helped me.' As long as that happens, all the idiots in the world and all the stupid press can say what they want to. It just doesn't matter." "Stay in school. Lie to your teachers, but stay in school." (At a Smashing Pumpkins concert) Corgan: "Are you ready to rock!" (Crowd cheers.) Corgan: "Well then you are in the wrong place." "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 you're not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song Cow." "Well, we have brought certain things upon ourselves. I've certainly brought things upon us with my mouth." "Great music completely obliterates any concept of genre" (On The Tonight Show) Jay Leno: "So why is the band splitting up?" Billy Corgan: "Comedy doesn't pay." "It's a Backstreet Boy world, and at the end of the day, you just want to go home and kill yourself." "As a 28-year-old who has lived long enough to know the difference, I know now that the feelings I felt at 16 were not necessarily correct. But however over dramatic, the desperation and hopelessness I felt at 16 was my reality." "Life is everything and nothing all at once." "Don't judge yourself by other people's standards. You'll always lose." "I hate that in magazines, they always stick me somewhere in the back. It means they don't think I'm the cute one." "You can put out the big fire [Napster], but there are 100 other little fires ready to spring up, and you'll never put them all out. Ultimately, music is going to be free." "The album was going to come out. So I did what I always did: Try to make the best of a situation. I start covering up. Put on a good face. And honestly, as God is my witness, I'm glad the thing didn't sell, because if it had sold then it would have been really tough. I would look like I was insane to walk away from something that I'd just built." (about his uncomfortable situation with his former band Zwan and how grateful he was when Mary Star of the Sea album flopped.) "You'll never see Zwan. I'll never go anywhere near those people. Ever. I mean, I detest them." (about the chances of Zwan reuniting.)