Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.

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?

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

Music to me is so internal. It's physical and it's emotional. Whereas fashion is so much about the external that it's almost like a break. It's not inner turmoil. It's total escapism.

Mistakes are not always the result of someone's ineptitude.

No comedy should be longer than 90 minutes. There's no such thing as a good long joke.

I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

I've never considered musical equipment very sacred.

When I'm preparing for a swim, I imagine absolutely everything about it: the color of the water, how cold it is, the taste of salt in my mouth. I visualize each and every stroke.

Cities that tend of have better schools for middle-income families, they tend to have much better prospects for kids moving up in the income distribution.

I don't know a man on this Earth who can outwork me.