"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