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 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.

If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice?

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.

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

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.

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

I was part of a generation that changed the world - and it was taken over by poseurs.

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

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

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

Your current life is the result of your previous choices, if you want something different, begin to choose differently.

Franklin knew that the truth lay with the winter night: the world was silent and black-and-white.

Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it.

A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

Just as one can make a lot of garlands from a heap of flowers, so man, subject to birth and death as he is, should make himself a lot of good karma.

I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.

In the midst of darkness, light persists.

I'm easy driving, But I'm not a person who loves living pleasantly above all else. I'm not that way at all. I might think I'm that, but I'm not really that.

It's kind of strange-- in fiction you get to tell lies and are applauded for it.

Look deep inside the eyes of a woman, see the man you want to be.