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

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

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

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

Music is really driving my whole life.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

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

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

I’ve got a crush on my backing singer.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.

Love is the one wild card.