Being overly identified with [a certain period of time] becomes a noose around your neck, and people don't want you to grow up, they don't want you to change, they don't want you to evolve.

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?

I am very familiar with the sound of loss.

We never realize the power of real love unless we witness or experience a transaction, because real love costs.

You guard your hopes and pocket your dreams, you'd trade it all to avoid an unpleasant scene.

You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay.

At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can.

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, It could have been much better.

Writing is, after all, a gesture towards other people, giving something to others. And so it's not a completely hermetic exercise. It's really an opening up.

Acceptance and awareness are the keys to freedom.

It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.