I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.

Wrestling is one of the last truly rebellious American things left.

I often have deer on my property and there's a fox and owls. You're not going to see that in the city.

I was fantasising about my own death, I started thinking what my funeral would be like and what music would be played, I was at that level of insanity.

Where is this great love for rock and roll that existed for 50 or 60 years?

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.

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.

All I can go on is my own value system.

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

I was trying to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking.

I'm a really honest person.

Ultimately, running a band is about the relationships you have with people.

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.

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.

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 want people to see me happy.

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.

I don't wanna play this kind of cartoon character anymore.

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

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.

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.

A good artist is willing to die many times over. What's funny is, I've died so many times.

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

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

I do not think wrestling is going to save the world.

There is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic.

I do not trust those who make the vaccines, or the apparatus behind it all to push it on us through fear.

Soon you won't even have the choice to live or die as you wish!

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

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.

Even if you don't believe in God, exploring fully the idea of a god or gods should pose no threat to you.

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.

When I've tried to reinvent the wheel, I get bashed for not doing the familiar things.

I work differently than most people.

To me, it's the folly of man to make God human.

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.

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.

Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that.

I don't think people buy records because of anything that happens on Facebook. They buy records cause they're friends say 'I bought this record and I love it.'

Jesus teaches us to forgive and I've got to trust him on that one.

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 have a saying, which is, 'Crazy is good for business.' I think rock and roll really is about being a bit crazy.

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 think I'm an artistic radical, and I think I'll be recognized as one. I'm a really good musician and a songwriter, but I think my real legacy will be as a radical.

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 think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.

Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.

Hey, Christian rock, if you want to be good, stop copying U2. U2 already did it. You know what I mean? There's a lot of U2-esque Christian rock.

I just don't want to live in the past. I'm really disappointed by so many people of my generation who - in order to promote their new work, they have to constantly lean on their past. I don't want to be that type of artist... I see a lot of people out here doing really marginal music.