Bono

Bono: I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that's what makes them extraordinary.

Bono: It would be wrong for me to say, 'Yes, we can change the world with a song.' But every time I try writing, that's where I'm at. I'm not stupid. I'm aware of the futility of rock & roll music, but I'm also aware of its power.

Bono: Great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God.

Bono: The stage is but a platform shoe.

Bono (about U2's guitarist The Edge): He's an owl!

Bono: I'm the Fidel Castro of speechifying. We've got a few hours, don't we?

Bono: When I write, it's there. There's no staring at a blank page.

Bono: Look, I'm sick of Bono and I AM Bono.

Bono: I hate the idea of being in the UK Hall of Fame to be honest with you. We don't want to be in any Hall of Fame until we're retired or dead.

Bono: You know, I do what I do for charity because I am drawn to these people. I hear their plights, and feel their pain, and offer my support. I can always do more, and I plan to, my work has only just begun.

Bono: Imagine if a third of the kids at your local primary school were AIDS orphans. That's a reality in Africa where the parents of 13 million children have been killed by AIDS.

Tony Blair: (The British Prime Minister on Bono being awarded an honorary British knighthood) I'll leave it to others far more knowledgeable than me to talk about U2's music. All I'll say is that, along with millions of others right across the world, I am a huge fan.

Bono (on why he'd never run for President): I wouldn't want to move to a smaller house!

Bono: Here's to the future! The only limits are the limits of our imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in, dream out loud, at high volume.

Bono: Pop music tells you that everything is OK and rock music tells you that it's not, but that you can change it.

Bono: It's written in rock and roll that all you need is love, but you also need a great nose.

Bono on the set of Vertigo music video: I love the smell of sand up my nose in the morning.

Bono: I hope that my work - the activism - will be forgotten. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Bono: It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

Bono: Music and activists working together can overcome the forces of economics and corporations.

Bono: Rock 'n' roll is ridiculous. It's absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

Bono: As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

Bono: This is our moment, this is our time, this is our chance to stand up for what is right. Three thousand Africans, mostly children, die every day of mosquito bites. We can fix that. Nine thousand people dying every die of a preventable, treatable disease like Aids. We have got the drugs. We can help them.

Bono (at the National Prayer Breakfast, 2/2/06): Please join me in praying that I don't say something we all regret. If you're wondering what I'm doing at the prayer breakfast, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth. Unless that cloth is leather.... [There's] only one possible explanation... I've got a messianic complex.

Bono on his lyrics: Looking back, I see a lot of unfinished songs. It annoys me sometimes that I look back and see a sort of inane couplet. I have to live with it.

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

Bono: I don't know why, but we always had this belief that there was something sacred about our music, that it was almost holy, as absurd as that sounds.

Bono: People probably felt that having children would chill me out, but rather the opposite. It's made me a lot more interested in the world, the way it is shaped and formed, the world that they're about to enter into.

Bono: We think the only fitting memorial for those who lost their lives on September 11 is to build not just a safer, less dangerous world but a fairer world where all people have a chance to live life.

Bono: I don't think historically the way this campaign has been waged against terror will be seen as anything other than a success in terms of the least loss of human life and a certain measuredness, which most of the world weren't expecting from the United States.

Bono on a song nomination for an Oscar with U2: For a couple boys from the north side of Dublin, it doesn't get much bigger. I mean, you feel like you're breaking into somebody else's house and robbing their furniture.

Bono: With U2, it's songwriting by accident. That is really how we work. We find a mood. We find a moment. And then I've got to put it into words.

Bono: History will judge us on how we respond to the AIDS emergency in Africa... whether we stood around with watering cans and watched while a whole continent burst into flames...or not.

President George W. Bush: He has a willingness to lead, to achieve what his heart tells him, and a belief that nobody should be living in poverty and hopelessness in the world.

Bono: I can't write a straight love song... it makes me throw up.

Bono: In Ireland everyone treats us for what we are. Human beings, musicians and Irish. I speak for the others when I say we are proud to be Irish.