A paper to celebrate Bono

[wertsie]

Hey, guys! For my "writing with style" class I'm writing a paper about Bono as sort of a "tribute" to an extraordinary person. I'm not sure exactly how to organize it yet, but I would love it if you could post quotes from him involving some of the following:

*his family
*Africa and/or Drop the Debt
*his relationships with the band members
*his spirituality

Also, if you have any good quotes from other people about him, that would work too.

Thanks!

 

[souLnation2002]

BP FALLON: WHO'S YOUR HEROINE?
Bono: Ali. She's so sane although she chooses to live with me.

"They are kinda hip kids. They are great. But, I have to say it is their mother that has to take the credit for this. I love Ali and I adore my kids and I want to be there for them. But, I probably don't have the ummm..the actual mental capacity. Ummmm...to look after them as well as their mother. She kinda runs the show around here and I am just you know kinda tidied up occasionally and thrown out to work. They have parties here when I go on tour." - Bono, in a radio interview

"After introducing these beautiful women to my wife they all lost interest in me! They're her friends now." - Bono

BP: Do you believe in flying saucers?
BONO: In my kitchen they're an everyday thing.
BP: Have you ever seen one?
BONO: She's a good shot.

"Ali, my missus says "We are not 50,000 people...SHUT UP!" - Bono on Radio 1

"He's the perfect rock and roll baby. He sleeps blissfully all day and roars all night. Ali is a saint; I try to do my bit, but I don't have the right breasts." - Bono, about Elijah

"The best thing about Bono is Ali. She is calm and rational and able to see beyond individuals to policies." - Eamon Dunphy, U2 biographer, about Ali's influence on Bono's political development

Interviewer: "What does your wife call you, does she call you Bono or does she call you Paul?"
Bono: "She calls me 'Baby'."

"One day, a guy came to my house and said: 'I'm the angel of death.' My wife didn't let that confuse her. She said: 'How nice. Can you come back in, say, 40 years?' " . - Bono


more at
Ali's Element

 

[wertsie]

Oh thank you thank you thank you!!!!

 

[Liesje]

"Being one can be great, but respecting differences can be greater."

"Any kind of machismo disappears when you see what the mother of the child is capable of. For an unreconstructed male, it really threw me."

"When those people get up at the Grammys and say, "I thank God," I always imagine God going, "Oh, don't -- please don't thank me for that one. Please, oh, that's an awful one! Don't thank me for that -- that's a piece of [crap]!" The most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years -- the idea of grace--is the reason I would like to be a Christian. Though, as I said to [U2 guitarist] The Edge one day, I sometimes feel more like a fan, rather than actually in the band. I can't live up to it. But the reason I would like to is the idea of grace. It's really powerful."

"I fell in love with Ali the first time I saw her. Absolutely. And the last time."

"U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and
emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone."

"I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God. It's almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building. God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that. You know, it says somewhere in the scriptures that the Spirit moves like a wind -- no one knows where it's come from or where it's going. The Spirit is described in the Holy Scriptures as much more anarchic than any established religion credits."

"I think it's the spiritual strength that's essential to the band. People have got to find their own way. I'm not into standing up and saying, 'hey, you should be into God!' My own life is exhilirating through an experience I feel, and I feel there's no point in talking about something which should be there in your life anyway. You don't have to preach about it."

"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in the window at Larry. Larry just shouted at them and told them to go away. And then turned the hose on them! Larry likes to play drums."

"One must be political at times, but sometimes you have to look beyond that, to just the state of the human spirit."

"People expect that because I am a believer that I somehow have all the answers. And I was saying that really I have more questions, as a result of being a believer, and the road I am going down is a road with many side roads, and you get lost along the way and I don't feel that Im a very good ad for God, y'know. If ever there was a sinner there is one here."


WINFREY: You say that having a Protestant mother and a Catholic father in Ireland taught you many lessons?
BONO: Well, a few probably, but maybe, one, to be suspicious sometimes of religion, you know. I'm--I'm a believer, but
sometimes I think religion is the thing, you know, when--when God, like Elvis, has left the building, you get religion. But
when God is in the house, you get something else. And I'm happy in a Catholic cathedral or a tent show, you know,
down in--in--in the South, you know, and gospel music. I'm just--I'm as comfortable or uncomfortable in either of those
locations.

"The fact that I am attracted to people like Gandhi and Martin Luther Kingis because I was exactly the opposite of that, I was the guy who wouldn't turn the other cheek"

 

[Liesje]

other's on Bono:

"You made people listen. You made people care and you taught us that whether we are poor or prosperous we have only one world to share. You taught young people that they do have the power to change the world."
UN Secretary General

"Hes a poet. Hes a philospher. And last night I think I saw him walk on water"
Mick Jagger

"Bono is to be congratulated for his tireless work on behalf of many humanitarian causes, from fighting to alleviate famine and poverty, the scourge of AIDS in Africa, and for using his talent and influence to fulfill the prophetic vision of Tikkun Olam, of helping to mend and repair the world."
Rabbi Marvin Hier

 

[wertsie]

Yay! Great! More excellent stuff!

There's no maximum length on this thingie either...Methinks it'll be a long one!

 

[souLnation2002]

need more?

I like to be able to talk to people, I like to be able to spend time with people. I don't like when they see me as anything other than a person. [When] people start relating to me as some sort of pop star, I get real freaked out. - 1984

To me a rock and roll concert is 3-D, it's a physical thing - it's rhythm for the body. It's a mental thing in that it should be intellectually challenging. But it's also a spiritual thing, because it's a community, it's people agreeing on something, even if it's only for an hour and a half. - 1985

I can't quite remember whose idea it was. All I know is that Larry looked like some sort of porn star, Edge looked like his sister Jill, Adam hasn't taken the dress off, and I looked like Barbara Bush. - about the music video for One

Rock & roll is ridiculous, it's absurd. In the past U2 was trying to duck that. But now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss. I think it is the missing scene from Spinal Tap - four guys in a police escort, asking themselves, 'Should we be enjoying this?' The answer is, fucking right. It's a trip. It's part of the current of rock and roll that just drags you along - and you can feed off of it. Mock the devil and he will flee from thee. - 1992, about Zoo TV

In the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it's not just about airplay and chart position. - Rolling Stone May 10, 2001

Sometimes at home... I feel little like a tourist... they get on so well without me.

The Mirrorball Man, he's 'the preacher stealing hearts at the traveling show.' He's a cross between a tele-evangelist and a politician/ country singer. I haven't quite worked him out yet. But I'm really enjoying his glass cathedral. He's into money and he's selling a religion where you can believe in anything really. It's kinda like the 90's, y'know. It's a religion without God, it's a religion where everybody can have what they want and make a lot of money as well...

Being a performer is like having a twitch, sometimes it just comes on.

I want to thank my old man, my father, for giving me this voice. He was a fine tenor and he always said if I had his voice who knows what might have happened. He had been ill for one week and has gone now. He's free of all that now. This is a song I wrote for him. This is 'Kite.' - 2001

I'm very secure with the fact that I'm not black. I'm white, pink and rosy. But I've got soul. - 2001
Basically, it's a movie about myself, Adam, Edge and Larry - three men and a baby. - on RATTLE AND HUM

People look at someone like me and think he wants the world to love him. But he probably just wants one person to love him. - 2001

It's saying, 'We are one, but we're not the same.' It's not saying we even want to get along, but that we have to get along together in this world if it is to survive. It's a reminder that we have no choice. - on "One"

I don't want to be so deep that people have to drown to relate to me. - 1987

To be united, to be one, is a great thing. But to respect differences may be even greater. - 23 Sep 1997 at Sarajevo

He was a very exasperating child; he wasn't a bad child but bloody exasperating. My God, he really was...He was living in his own world and we were sort of superfluous to it. And it still applies today. He was an extraordinary kid. He was very hard to nail down. We couldn't get him to study when he was in school, just could not get him to study. He'd go off to study and the next thing you'd hear him strummin' the guitar. (U2 At the End of the World 315) - BOBBY HEWSON, BONO'S FATHER

 

[Schmeg]

"You can't surrender to melancholy; that's too easy. Joy is a subject I go on and on about. It's one of the only emotions you can't contrive. It's impossible. Despair and anger are easier to convey. Joy is right next to happiness, which is not so interesting, and sentimentality. Great rock 'n' roll, the raw stuff, is pure joy. It's that sense of being alive, of being grateful for your pulse."
--2001


"Innocence is more powerful than experience."


"If I am close to the music, and you are close to the music, then we are close to each other."
--2001


GQ: How about those skin-tight chequerboard trousers you used to wear?
Bono: Unforgiveable. Forget The Unforgettable Fire, what about the Unforgivable Trousers?


"Actually it's hard to find four people this good-looking who are willing to write and record and perform together."
--Bono, 2001


"Listen, I'll talk to Jesus. I'll talk to the lady at the check-out there at Kmart. I'll talk to anyone."


"Fear is the opposite of faith."


"It's your future. The only limits are the limits of your imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in - dream out loud. At high volume! That's what we do for a living. Lucky Bastards!"
--Dublin, New Year's Day, 1990


BP: What's the most frightening thing that ever happened to you?
Bono: I found this pair of sunglasses, I picked them up, I put them on...


"Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades..."


"Move your mind and your ass will follow."


"I'm the only person I know who takes off his sunglasses to keep a low profile. To go incognito I take them off."


"People are interested in bridges. I guess I've always been more interested in what goes on underneath bridges."
-- 1985


"I got a job as a petrol-pump attendant so that I could write when the cars weren't coming in. But then we had the oil crisis, and we had those queues for miles, and the cars just kept coming, so I quit."
-- discussing his early teen years


"You can download an atmosphere and dial up a groove, but there's a certain magic when three musicians and a dyslexic get together and play in a room.
--1999

"U2's music has taken me on some odd diversions. But this has got to be the maddest and most absurd experience of my life."-
--after meeting the Pope in 1999


"There's quite a party atmosphere whenever I announce we're going on tour. I don't take it personally."
-- 1993, about the Hewson family


"There?s a, uh, phenomenon back home called, uh, the ballroom. A lot of bands make their living playing the ballrooms of Ireland. We never could. So we joined a rock band."
--Providence, 10/31/01


"Okay, um, I?d like to introduce to you, um, a really extraordinary keyboard player, Bruce [keep missing last name; too lazy to look it up]. Ah, Bruce is gonna help us play a tune that we haven?t been playin? on this tour and, uh, we should because even though it was written a few years ago it could have been written a couple of months ago and?Please.
"Dedicated to all wealthy revolutionaries, wherever they might be. You know what I?m talking about. And the murder they commit in the name of an idea that they value more than people."
--Providence, 10/31/01


"We- we would like to thank you for just what has been the best year of our life, that is in U2. It?s an extraordinary year, and extraordinary events and I just want to say that, just, we are so proud and so humbled to be on tour in the US at this point in time."
--Providence, 10/31/01

 

[popsadie]

You two.net has some very cool articles from Bono's Laureate honor..."Every person he has come to, every world leader, every opinion-maker, every common person has felt the incredible
humanitarian pull of this most extraordinary individual. I remember -- it's shown in the program this evening -- one of these most
remarkable firsts. Bono calling me on the cell phone one afternoon said, "Jeff, what are you doing?" I said, "I'm driving home."
He said, "You better pull over." So I pulled over. I said, "What's up?" He said, "You won't quite believe what just happened to
me. Jesse Helms just blessed me and what we're doing." That was even better than two cheers from my colleague. "--from Jeffrey Sachs speech at the banquet...

 

[verte76]

Pardon me poking in here, but this is all such COOL stuff.
*major Bono fuzzies*
Hell, this *is* PLEBA, you know.

 

[wertsie]

Thanks for all the help, everyone!

Major, MAJOR Bono fuzzies! Man, when I start writing my paper I'll probably be bawling like a baby.

I U !!!!!

 

[wertsie]

I'm back!

Does anybody have the exact quote from Larry from when he was talking about how Bono helped him after his mother died on the Legends program on VH1?