When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

Speak low, if you speak love.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, ‚Will you all just shut up!‘ And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, ‚What are you doing?!‘ I was like, ‚You better get up here! I don’t play the fighting games.‘

I’ve seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.

People don’t realise how difficult it is to work with people day in and day out that know absolutely nothing.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

Tell the children the truth.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

I don’t believe in endorsing a product that you don’t want to endorse.

You can only have one aim per debate.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

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

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

I do think that we’re gonna move towards this world where eventually you’ll be able to capture a whole experience that you’re in and be able to send that to someone.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

I don’t think people are going to talk in the future. They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs.

The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‚Where’s the self-help section?‘ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

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.