Bono Quotes

We were inhabiting a space where it didn't feel like we had much company, a space critics might dismiss as a compromised middle, but I imagined as a radical center.

If you’re not at the table you’re on the menu?

We had a street gang that was very vivid — very surreal. We were fans of Monty Python. We'd put on performances in the city center of Dublin. I'd get on the bus with a stepladder and an electric drill. Mad shit. Humor became our weapon. Just stand there, quiet — with the drill in my hand. Stupid teenage shit.

I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural... something unseemly... about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It was weird enough when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2 concert... but this is really weird, isn't it?

If your heart was hard, that would be better / You could only break it once or twice / After that it would be rid of blood and you could let it turn to ice.

There is no them. There's only us.

I was in that room. It might have been a rehearsal room as a new song dropped by, but soon enough it was a walk down a country lane. “Now,” said the doctor, continuing. “Pull out the feeling that makes you feel safest and strongest and describe it for me.” “I’m walking along a river with my best friend,” I said. “And everything is just as it should be. I have confidence in my footsteps; I feel I am learning judgment but not being judged. I can say anything I want. Sometimes there’s a reply; sometimes there’s not. It’s just a conversation between friends.” “And your friend,” inquired the doctor. “Who is it?” I said, “I think it’s Jesus.” I heard the doctor shuffle, nervously, in his seat. Maybe I wasn’t that deep in his hypnosis. And he asked, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m just walking down a country lane by a river. It’s not the Tolka or the Liffey or even the Mississippi. Could it be the Jordan? I’ve always had a thing about the river Jordan.” Emerging from this “deep relaxation,” I could sense that the great physician had not expected me to find Jesus in my bottom drawer. The doctor was polite

If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that cloth is leather. It's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic complex. Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.

It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star.
I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.

There is anyway a kind of off-color romance to a deserted seaside town in the winter,

Guggi not only gave me the name Bono; he gave everyone in his family new and surreal names.

In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim

Don't get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited. I'd just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N. Come to think of it 'Bono' is a four-letter word. The whole business of obscenity — I don't think there's anything certainly more unseemly than the sight of a rock star in academic robes. It's a bit like when people put their King Charles spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats. It's not natural, and it doesn't make the dog any smarter.

We could defend ourselves. But even though some of us became pretty good at violence ourselves, others didn't. They got the shit kicked out of 'em. I thought that was kind of normal. I can remember incredible street battles. I remember one madster with an iron bar, just trying to bring it down on my skull as hard as he possibly could, and holding up a dustbin lid, which saved my life. Teenage kids have no sense of mortality — yours or theirs.

I am a Christian - but sometimes I feel very removed from Christianity. The Jesus Christ that I believe in was the man who turned over the tables in the temple and threw the money-changers out - substitute T.V. evangelists if you like…why in the West, do we spend so much money on extending the arms race instead of wiping out malaria, which could be eradicated given ten minutes worth of the world's arm budget? To me, we are living in the most un-Christian times. When I see these racketeers, the snake-oil salesmen on these right-winged television stations, asking for not your $20.00, or your $50.00, but your $100.00 in the name of Jesus Christ, I just want to throw up!!