As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don't read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2's audience.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

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.

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.

I don't like the name, U2, actually.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don't like it, actually.

I used to - my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I've always heard kind of melodies in my head.

God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

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 most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years - the idea of grace - is the reason I would like to be a Christian.

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

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

It's much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won't keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don't know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we've got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, 'Is this it? Are we still relevant?'

I'm home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

I have learned to interface - what I think would be the contemporary term - with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I've learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

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.

I'm the man that brought you the mullet.

U2 was involved in Live Aid, and I ended up going to Ethiopia and working there for some time with my wife, Ali.

I'm as skeptical as anyone would be about celebrities and causes - and I will dare to say to you that I don't think of myself as a celebrity per se.

Sadly, I do my homework. I've a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I'll read C. Fred Bergsten's defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It's embarrassing to admit.

I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

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.

If September 11th has taught us anything, it's certainly that the world has never been so interdependent. It is impossible now to be an island of prosperity in a sea of despair.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

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.

The idea that there is one kind of African is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue, for example, that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

Facts, like people, want to be free - and when they're free, liberty is usually around the corner.

What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution - this revolution - is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.

Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn't it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?

In professional wrestling, I'm sure in combat sports, there's always gonna be testosterone.

I got my name in the hat for 2019 Mayor of Houston, Texas.

To be able to make a difference in one life is really what I'm all about. To make a change.

People say, 'Respect your elders,' but I always go, 'Respect your young people because they are our future.'

Aw, man, it's huge to actually have a platform and let the world see Reality of Wrestling as well as to be able to compete with all the other independent companies around the world.

It's almost like the Monday Night Wars for me all over again. That's the kind of feeling I get with Reality of Wrestling.

There's been so many rivals, most of them Canadian guys like Rick Martel, Christian and Chris Benoit. Those guys were all ultimate professionals, every one of them.

That's something I always say is good to do in life, is to leave our mark in this lifetime.

I've never really considered myself a wrestler. I always considered myself an entertainer, but I always wanted to be better than the guy next to me.

I always wanted to be mentioned in the same breath as all of the great wrestlers.

Throughout my whole time in wrestling on the road, going out and being around some of the whitest people in the world, I've never had any problems with anybody. It was never black or white. Booker T was just a wrestler. I did that by design.

My thing has always been preparation. When I was a performer on the roster as one of the guys on a weekly, full-time schedule, I was always prepared.