“Mandela's heroism is the heroism of a man who suffered so badly for what he thought of as freedom. And yet when he had the upper hand he has this incredible self-control and these incredible leadership qualities.”

“I love America and I hate it. I'm torn between the two. I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.”

“Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.”

“We're starting our own religion at last. The Order of Frisbeetarians. We believe that when you die, your soul ascends to a rooftop and you can never get it back.”

“The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never happened to me before. You know, on a long tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog. It's very odd, 'cause I don't have a dog.”

“The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.”

“Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.”

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

“I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable.”

“Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that's odd, but I think it's odd if artists aren't interested in the world around them. I'm always chasing that.”

“The job of art is to chase ugliness away.”