Bono

There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

There's nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.

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.

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God's eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can't un-see.

Anyone that's involved in development has discovered that all the good work that's been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays... and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don't know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it's mad that people like me are listened to - you know, rap stars and movie stars.

Africa will thrive.

Rock music is niche.