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.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

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.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I just want to keep writing music.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

I’m a painter in sound.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

The fame isn’t important to me. It’s a blessing to have. Having so many people that support me, that love me and listen to my music, is beautiful.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

I just want to be myself.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.