The worst crime is faking it.

All of my music is honest.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

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.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

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

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

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.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

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

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

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

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.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

I wish they would only take me as I am.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

I’m different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I’ve built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image… My image is real… I have never had marketing people telling me what to do.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

No man was ever great by imitation.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

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.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

It’s important for me to let my fans know I really don’t care. I’m confident.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

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

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

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.