The music business - and I guess you could say any artistic endeavor - usually rewards those who are on the leading edge of where everything is going, but you can't be too far.

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?

Stop wasting time and start living.

Oh deep winter snow, pale executioner, thou who delights in a slow, torturous death.

If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?, ’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.

A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

No one will ever make necessity not happen.

Be like a tree. The tree gives shade even to him who cuts off its boughs.

One forgets so quickly one's own youth.

Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula does sunlight.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

The speed of the fleet is not determined by the fastest vessel; rather it is determined by the slowest one.