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.

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.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

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

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

When you’re faced with an opponent, the media asks the questions, and I answer truthfully. I don’t hold back.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

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.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

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

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I’m here to spread a message of hope. Follow your heart. Don’t follow what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

I want the world to see my body.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself. Guys who have to pretend to be tough, they ain’t. I’m tough.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘

When you’re just like everybody else, you’ve nothing to offer other than your conformity.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.