BONO QUOTES

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A lot of bands will go to the far right or the far left just to make 'new' sounds, but they leave emotion behind. People can see through pretend - if a band can't do it for real, then people shouldn't go to see them. Emotion is everything. - 1980

Instead of directing your energies negatively, into busting somebody's head open, you can direct them positively, into letting yourself go and appreciating what's going down onstage. - 1980, about touring

It's the spirit of Bruce Springsteen that interests me. I don't think we share a lot in common musically, but it's the spirit. He is a performer and a soul singer, and I would aspire to being a soul singer. The commitment from his band is hopefully the commitment that comes off from U2. He's real... he is who he says he is. - 1984

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

We are cut off and we are separated from our fans. I don't like it but we've got to live with it. I miss being able to meet someone after a concert and go back to their place and have coffee, or sleep on their floor. - 1987

As a lyric writer, I'm more interested in people than politics, and more interested in why people should want to hit each other over the head with a broken bottle rather than where they do it... it being Northern Ireland. Everybody is violent, I feel. - 1981

I wouldn't take on the job of making people aware of reality, I'd take on the job of making myself aware of reality. Being in a rock and roll band certainly removes you from reality, so it's a full-time job. - 1985

We can't tell people what to do, they'll just continue to come back and never think for themselves. We sing about issues that have an effect on us and hopefully that causes some in our audience to think about them too. - 1985

People think, 'There goes Bono running all over the stage. And unlike Mick Jagger, Bono doesn't do it with a wink. That's the problem. Bono actually believes in the people that come to the concerts and believes in what he's doing.' Everything I say becomes some sort of statement, something of vast importance. I could go on stage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out and people would think it was some statement about something. - 1989

There's a phony idea that rock and roll is this sort of cult thing. By definition it's big, it's popular - it's big music. Elvis Presley was a stadium act. The Beatles were the first stadium act. And there was more commercialization from those two acts than there is even now. This ridiculous, over-the-top exercise is our attempt to show we are actually not running away from the size that rock and roll has become, but we're actually kind of taking it on. And now we are used to it, taking it on with some humor, subverting it somewhat... Our music never had a roof on it. It's music that likes to float. I think that's one of the reasons why we enjoy these big open spaces, because it can't contain the music. - 1992, about Zoo TV Outside Broadcast

This music thing - we're still trying to get it right. The rest is great, but it's not really where we're at. What's wonderful is to walk onstage and have fifty, sixty thousand people set themselves on fire for your music. That's what it feels like some nights, it's just this bonfire of feelings and emotions. That's what really turns my head. - 1993/1994

They say in the eighties that rock and roll is dead. I don't think it's dead, but if it's dying, it's because groups like us aren't taking enough risks. You know, make a movie. Put yourself up there against what's out there, Robocop and Three Men and a Baby. That's great for rock and roll, not just for U2. I think you've got to dare. - 1989

I'm not a hero - I'm a rock and roller, I'm spoilt rotten and paid too much for what I do - I'd do it for nothing, you know what I mean? It's like, you people, you need heroes, the people want - the media want to create heroes - but if I agreed to the job, you'd kill me... so I'm backing out! - 1992

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

Adam pretended he could play and used words like 'gig' and talked about things like 'action' on the bass and we thought 'this is a guy who can play!' He was a liar. He actually couldn't play a note. Dave was just playing away on the acoustic and people just kept on coming up and saying 'there's something wrong' and we couldn't figure out what it was until suddenly we thought - It's Adam! Adam can't play. He had his own distinctive style from the start - at first it was called BLUFF, but then it began to work. - 1979

At school he stuck out like a sore thumb. He used to drink coffee in class and the teachers got used to it. He wore a kilt. He also took off his clothes at one rehearsal when he got very excited. - about Adam

It's okay banging your fist on the table. It's not okay to put your fist in the face of an opponent, whether they are protesters or police. - about the death of a protester at the G8 summit in 2001.

I've heard people talking about having blanks, going through writer's block. I always remember when I was a kid, I remember being at school, when people were talking about Yeats, and how at this particular period in his life he couldn't write and he'd nothing he wanted to write and he was desperate about this. I remember I put up my hand and asked the teacher 'Well, I'm not trying to be smart or anything buy why didn't he write about that?'

I run away from writing words. Words are scary...

The first duty of any rock 'n' roll band is not to be boring so I don't want to be boring about our involvement with Greenpeace or Amnesty International or anything else. There are just so many fronts on which I'd like to do something with my life, but right now it's the music that we do best. If through the music we can illuminate a problem or shine a light on some ugliness, then we do it.

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.

We try to break down the barrier between the stage and the audience, but sometimes in our efforts we go over the top. In order to get across to a large crowd of 20,000 people, you sometimes exaggerate yourself, and we become cartoons. - 1983

We felt were being made a cartoon of – the good guys of rock and so forth – so we decided to make some cartoons of our own and send them out as disinformation. - about Zoo TV

I think the thing I like least about myself is that I'm reasonable. And being reasonable is a very un-pop-star trait. So I'm taking bastard lessons. - 1987

There are four members of U2. If there is a fifth, non-musical, member it is Paul McGuinness. Either that or Adam's willie! U2 is a gang of four but a corporation of five.

It’s a trap when you agree to being one person because when you step out of character with that, you look like a hypocrite. There’s nothing now to step out of because they’re not sure they really know me any more.

The idea of punk at first was, 'Look, you're an individual, express yourself how you want, do what you want to do'. But that's not the way it came out in the end. The Sex Pistols were a con, a box of tricks sold by Malcolm McLaren. Kids were sold the imagery of violence, which turned into the reality of violence, and it's that negative side that I worry about. People like Bruce Springsteen, carry hope. Like the Who - 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' I mean, there is a song of endurance, and that's the attitude of the great bands. We want our audience to think about their actions and where they are going, to realize the pressures that are on them, but at the same time, not to give up. - 1981

Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love. I think there is nothing more radical than two people's loving each other, because it's so infrequent. - 1983

That was a religious outburst, contrasting the idea of Easter Sunday with the Easter Sunday when British paratroopers shot dead 13 protesters. It was naive. A lot of our work in the '80s was very naive. But I like that now. It's ecstatic music. It has a sense of wonder and a joy about it. - 2000, about 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'

Edge and I spent time together with our families in Nice during the time off, and we spent a lot of time listening to music and thinking about what we wanted to do next, and we were intrigued by two of the directions that seem to be going on these days. We liked the tendency in England toward pop songwriting in the traditional way of Lennon-McCartney and Lou Reed - something that Noel Gallagher and Oasis are doing. But we also liked the energy and adventurousness of the techno, hip-hop world. So, we decided to explore bringing those two disciplines together. That's what this record is about. - 1996, about 'Pop'

It's important to keep the options open in everything that you do. You don't learn by drawing a line and saying these are the limits of rock 'n' roll or this is the size of the buildings you should play. Success is one thing in pop music, but staying relevant is the bigger challenge. We are still a rock 'n' roll band, but when we looked around last year, it was clear that hip-hop and dance artists are making the music that defines these closing years of the 20th century, and we wanted to see what parts of that music would work for us. - 1996

We didn't set out to make a club culture record. We were just inspired by a lot of the music being made by hip-hop and dance artists and we wanted to explore some of those elements. But we still wanted to make a U2 record and I think people will recognize that as soon as they hear the rest of 'Pop.' Some people are going to hear the words 'dance' and 'club culture' used and put on our record and go, 'That's not a club culture record.' And they are right. Most of 'Pop' is not something that would sound right on the sound system of a big dance club, but it wasn't designed for that. - 1997

To me, the song goes back to the idea of David being the first blues singer, and the first man on record to shout at God in this angry fashion. There are a lot of people who feel that if there is a God, then roll him out because they've got some questions to ask. It's a very angry song. - 1997, about 'Wake Up Dead Man'

I used to listen to everything. From blues to Frank Sinatra, but Elvis was a kind of obsession. He wasn't just a poor white caricature well-behaved as many that American phonograph industry released at that time. He was a real pioneer and a great artist for what he contributed to build the rock culture. I became a kind of Elvis specialist. I've been called many times to talk about his journey in "History of Rock 'n' Roll" documentaries. And, in our new album, I'm letting come out a few from what I've learned with his work. - 1996

As we grew up and life conduced us, we lost that simplicity to make concepts for reality... everything got more confusing. Everything gets bigger and sometimes we have to stop to realize what's happening and go on. Life is a mental and sensorial adventure. - 1996

I chose being with them, 'cos I noticed a great talent in them. The things that were published about my presence in their shows and doing publicity for them are silly. They don't need my help to be noticed. I just admire their work. The idea of liking something popular be a problem is beyond my comprehension. - 1996, about the band Oasis

I'm worried about heroine being fashion again. It's a very dangerous drug. It's for suicides. I think every human being uses some kind of drug... can be sugar, chocolate, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, coffee and even other kind of addictions such as sex or extreme competition in sports, etc. It's part of our human condition to make use of substances or activities that make pleasure. The problem is that many people do not rationally distribute their many ways to feel pleasure. That's why you need lots of activity to make you want to reach real satisfaction. This way, you're not going to do things that only gives you pleasure for one day or for some time. The problem it's not the drug, but the abuse. The abuse of anything is bad. Even water. And the stupid people always will exist to abuse substances that just contribute to make we feel something different. About heroine, the big problem is that it do not let you make any choice. It's a stupid drug, it stops any other activity of the person. The guy starts living for the next hit. It's a shame that it became fashion. It's the same thing as if jumping from buildings without parachutes became fashion... - 1996

I like to make an original partnership between music and image, but I don't want to go ahead in that, I don't want to became an actor... I will invest in some productions, depending on time and money, but my place is offstage. - 1996

We've started our album and it's going to blow your mind. It's real punk rock, with some great guitar sounds and some beautiful melodies. The band is so tight coming straight off tour. I think we've really hit form. We were here to write a ballad, but we just keep knocking out these hard rock tunes. - 2001, on the next album after 'ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND

Somewhere between being true to yourself and repeating yourself is a world of questions. I can't bear the idea of repeating myself, but allowing Edge to be true to himself as a guitar player has given the album a sense of the way it used to be. It sounds like a classic U2 album, and I have to accept that. - about ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND

There is no time to be arty, at the beginning of the 21st century. We had to find the center. - April 2001, Spin Magazine

I've been insufferable before, and I will be again. There's no finer specimen. But this is no time for polemics, either.

U2 are a corporation. We're a gang of four and a corporation of five [counting manager Paul McGuinness]. The thing that separated us from temporary, sophomoric, white-bread fucking art students is the thing that puts us in with hip-hop: Taking care of business, as Elvis Presley described it, is the thing that marks how much artists care about what they do. When rock stops trying to communicate on the level of mass media, it becomes progressive rock; it becomes solipsistic.

In the U.S., the experience of seeing U2 was never a physical one the way it was in Europe. There, the whole floor would lift up. It was intoxicating. This also means the best seats in the house can't be taken by people with big bank accounts. Though we'll also have expensive tickets for rich people. Rich people have feelings, too, is our position. - April 2001, Spin Magazine

Los Angeles brought it to a head. I lost my senses completely. I was trying to get the crowd to trust us. I went into the crowd with a flag, but I ended up standing on the balcony of the Sports Center. I threatened to jump off if they didn't back off. And, in fact, I did jump. The crowd caught me - but what about the others who followed me? Somebody could have died at that concert, and it was a real sickener for me. It's meant a total reevaluation of what we are about live. We don't need to use a battering ram. It has to be down to the music. - 15 Sept 1983, Rolling Stone

We started writing songs with this record, and we're determined not to stop. It's our most literate record by far, because I just felt it's time to come clean. - on the JOSHUA TREE

Being onstage for us all is almost like going home. I like the kinetic energy of traveling, though sometimes it blows my head. Something that is very important to get across, I think, is that I don't want to be so deep that people have to drown in order to relate to me. Essentially, we are a lethal rock & roll band, and when we play live we really play. - on touring the JOSHUA TREE

RATTLE AND HUM takes place in an America that might not exist in someone else's reality. But it's an America that's very real to us.

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

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

I'm a greedy bastard, but it's not about the obvious. I'm greedy for my family, that they turn out all right. I'm greedy for my friends, that I don't lose them. I'm greedy for my band, that it realises its potential, it's musical ambitions. And I'm very dissatisfied with the way things are... I've been given a lot of great things, and I look around and see a lot of people with less. And again, it's not just material things I'm talking about. People think that material things are everything, and therefore because you have them you are fine. In fact, I think having them can actually just compound matters. - 1997

I think success is relatively easy for a group like this," Bono said. "I have an okay voice, and Edge is an original guitar player and Larry and Adam got a lot going...but I think we've been spoiled by success, to the degree that we can see through it. Being relevant is much harder. To be a failure and relevant would be more important to me than to be successful an irrelevant. - 1997

I find it amazing that people still see rock'n'roll, or pop music or whatever you want to call it, as the property of teenagers. Because I know teenagers who are more reactionary than their parents. And then there's people our age, who didn't want to just let go of their love of music, and don't want to stay in the same place. A lot of people's record collections stop at the very point where their life does. You know, death starts with your record collection! And I don't see it as an age thing. Because where still young, and people find it hard to figure that out-that there's 15 years between us and the Rolling Stones and The Who and all that. It's just because we were doing it when we were 18 or whatever that people think, "Gosh, they've been around a while." I'd like to get old before I die. Because I think when I'm 60, I'll finally be cool (grins). At 50, I'll still be working on it. Right now, I'm a dead loss, but covering up well. - 1997

I suppose a lot of rock'n'roll is the sound of grown men throwing tantrums. And, you know, the tantrum is a wonderful thing to watch, and some people throw 'em better than others! - 1997

I don't think our music is cool; it never really was for me. I mean, we've put on some cool rock shows or made a few cool rock videos. But our music is, hopefully, hot, and therefore uncool, you know, just open. Whereas cool is closed and exclusive. We just play with cool, really. It's a game. But I guess some people live by it, which is a strait-jacket. I think we're in the slipstream, riding right behind the mainstream. And that is when rock'n'roll is at it's most incredible. - 1997

My greatest weakness is definitely trying to explain myself. I think it's an Irish thing; Irish people talk too much. Because when we stop talking, we start fighting. And talking is always better. My greatest strength as an artist is probably I can feel like I can communicate these colours and feelings of our songs. I do feel I can communicate that with the band, I sometimes feel resentment (from others) about being on stage. I think that resentment makes me try harder to communicate. Now we have a bit of fun with the fact that, "Yes, we're rock stars." We spent 10 years trying to pretend we weren't. But that's what we are, right? That was the job we signed up, we got it, here we go. - 1997

I think the opposite of love is not hate. Its apathy. You only get angry about things you really care about. So that kind of anger can emphasize the positive by allowing it to come out, to be bitter, to bring up all that stuff.

It's funny. When people kept making fun of us as this band that wanted to change the world, we'd say, 'No, no, we just want to be musicians.' The truth is we really did want to change the world... Megalomania, if you will, set in at a very young age with us. But it wasn't just megalomania. We came out of punk rock, but not the [outrageous] Sex Pistols. We bought into the [politically minded] Clash. We have always been ideologues. We were in the back of the bus reading Bibles instead of Playboy when we were 19 or 20. - 2000

The job of rock'n'roll, if it has any kind of job, is to blow people's heads. Everyone's into nostalgia, which is really peculiar to me at the fag end of the 20th century you have this obsession with Beatles and Stones and 60's. We thought "let's do something that's forward looking and fresh'. That's why we came up with this production. This is where we live, we live in a neon time and place and we're trying to make it magical. It's not trying to be smart-arse or ironic at all. What we had had in our head was to make a big sci-fi gospel shed. It's like The Jetsons supermarket we had in mind, but we wanted Martin Luther King in the building, along with Elvis. - 1998

In all honesty, we're still the bleeding hearts club. And to tell the truth, our music is painfully, insufferably earnest; we've just gotten really smart at disguising it... and throwing people off the trail. If we'd have called 'Achtung Baby' anything else, we'd have been taken out and hung for it, I think, because it is so latent... And here we are, and it looks like you've copped on to it - 12 Feb 1997

There is a lot of soul. I think it shines even brighter amidst the trash and the junk. - on Zoo TV

And the Lord said 'Humble thyself, Bono! - 12 Dec 1997

There is a thing about wanting to gag rock and roll, and I've never thought my opinions were more important than anyone else's... but they are as important. - 1993

In the very start, even though we couldn't really get it together musically, there was something there and I call it the spark.

I'm a European; I see an America that's rehabilitated in a way that was unimaginable to me 10 years ago. Back then the U.S. was the neighborhood bully, inept in foreign policy, beating up on the wrong guy everywhere. With The Joshua Tree, we were writing about Central America and the dark side of the United States. Now America looks smart and, dare I say it, sexy again. - 2000

I like to be respected. But when it goes further than that, when people wanna find out the meaning of life just because you can sing in tune, because you can write songs - well, then they got the wrong guy. - 1987

The album's real strength is though you travel through deep tunnels and bleak landscapes, there's a joy at the heart of it. - on Joshua Tree

The truth is when that singer is saying something that comes from right down within him, and it affects you right down within you. That's when you start talking about great music, as distinct from nice music.

I guess some of the people out there who buy our records say that U2 has gone out into the ether and wish we'd come back to earth. Well, the bad news is, we're not coming back. I like it out there.

Well, I guess, when we were 23 or 24, we went through the phase where groups move into houses, and start putting paintings on the wall and they don't want to look like rednecks, so they read up on what paintings they should have, and what Chinese rugs... I guess we must have gone through a Chinese-rug phase, but we were over it coming out of our twenties. The weird thing is that you're left with only the right motives. If the reason you joined a band was to get laid, get famous, get rich they all went by the way fairly early, so all we're left with is... make that record.'' - 1997

Bands at our level deserve to be humbled. But it was that very gauche nature of where we were at that allowed us entry into a world where much more careful and cooler acts couldn't allow themselves or, depending on your point of view, were too smart to want to visit. - 1997

I think one of the things I found difficult in the eighties was this din of voices telling me `You can't fly, arsehole'. But that's the kind of thinking that results in restrained, reasonable music. - 1997

I love to write, and that's what I'd do if I couldn't still perform. The deadlines are something I'd have a problem with. - 1997

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. - 1999, on his son Elijah

People say we're the biggest band in the world. So what? That means nothing to me. No, it must mean something. But our want is to be worthy of the position we've been put in. To be the best -- to make a music that hasn't been made before. And I don't know that we'll get to that point. - 1987

All celebrities tend to milk their celebrity when it suits them, but, when you're as blessed, privileged, and, let's be honest, over-rewarded, as I have been in my life, I think you have a responsibility to put something back. - 1999

One of the hardest things about being in U2 was not belonging to a tradition. In the past, we've gone looking for a tradition to fit into. Now, we don't try to fit anymore. We don't even consider ourselves to be a rock 'n' roll band at all. - 1992

I'm not religious at all but I do believe in God strongly, and I don't believe that we just exploded out of thin air. I think it's the spiritual strength that's essential to the band.

My position is that I write songs, I'm in a band and I just hope that when it's all over for U2, that in some way we made the light a bit brighter. Maybe just tear off a corner of the darkness.

From PopMart, I felt us losing the crowd for the very first time. I remember it in Los Angeles -- I remember just feeling, there's people out there with popcorn, I can smell it, you know -- and I was just going, yeah. - 2001

I do enjoy being in a number one band, and I do enjoy the jet so I can get home while on tour, and I do enjoy hearing the record on the radio, so I don't want to come across as being down-in-the-mouth about being number one. I am on top of the world, it's just that something else is on top of me. - 1987

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

I don't want to leave Ireland. Without sounding overly patriotic, I love my country and where I come from, and want to live there.

The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high I.Q. He's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords or songs, where he is, and so on.

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