Billy Corgan Quotes

I think any label is bad. I'm more than a label.

I don't like labels.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.

My experience is that I find myself having to constantly define myself to others, day-in, day-out. The quote that's helped me the most through that is from Toni Morrison's "Beloved" where she says, "Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined" - so I find myself defining myself for other people lest I be defined by others and stuck into some box where I don't particularly belong.

If you put a label on yourself, people will pigeonhole you.

I've been compared to people since the beginning. When you're starting out, you need a comparison so people will understand you right away.

I don't want to be limited or ghettoized in any way.

I've tried actively to define myself and redefine myself, and not be pigeonholed.

I don't want to get pigeonholed.

It's so easy to be boxed into one part and one part only.

I have a fear of labels. If someone labels me, I have to respond - do I acknowledge it, reject it, deny it, live up to it, and defy it? Labels can affect your ability to be yourself. If you're not careful, like I wasn't when I was young, that can take a toll on you. You find yourself conforming to everyone else's ideas of who you are.

I don't want to shut the door and only be thought of as the dark girl.

Labels are limiting, and I don't like them.

If you can't pigeon-hole yourself, who can you pigeon-hole?

I'm sick of people putting boxes around everyone, telling you where and how you have to fit in.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

You are the imagination of yourself.

Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.

He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.

We rigidify our self-image to portray a certain identity to the world, which is one of the key impediments to authenticity.

You are what your record says you are.

Every day we choose who we are by how we define ourselves.