Quotes from Bono

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

You've gotta be very careful that grace and politeness do not merge into a banality of behavior, where we're just nice, sort of 'death by cupcake.'

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

I'm never nervous.

Rock music is niche.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it's mad that people like me are listened to - you know, rap stars and movie stars.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

The French are so into themselves that they don't even notice you.

I'm actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

Contrary to reports, this boy is not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle... and not just in the sense of money, by the way; the Beatles are untouchable - those billionaire reports are a joke.

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.

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

Anyone that's involved in development has discovered that all the good work that's been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

Until it's on the radio or online, it's not real. With U2, our album isn't finished until it's in the stores.

The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment.

Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.