A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

We are not at war against Islam.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

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.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

We have practiced diplomacy since the very beginning of the nation. Sometimes it has not worked, and we’ve had to go to war. I always believe you should try to find peace and reconciliation before conflict. That has been the approach I’ve taken.

A good song never gets old.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.