Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas

It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.

The ones whose light will remain with me long after they have burnt out are the ones that had grace. Because it's rare that the gift comes with grace. Some of the biggest arseholes I've ever met are the most gifted. Because it's "pretty girl" syndrome. Being gifted is like being born beautiful. You don't have to work a day in a year in your life for it. You were born with it. In one sense, it's like blue blood, money, gift, or beauty. They are the things that should make you the most humble, because they are not the things you have earned. They are the things you were given. Yet, it is my experience that they male people the most spoiled. And the people who work the hardest, and who have overcome the most obstacles on their life, who have reason to beat their breasts are the most humble, sometimes. I can't get over that. it's bewildering to me. To make it through success and still have manners, to still have curiosity, intellectual curiosity, to still have some grace, to keep your dignity, that is really... rare.

I wish to begin again on a daily basis. To be born again every day is something that I try to do. And I'm deadly serious about that.

I fell in love with you because there was a mischief in your eyes.

My point about alcohol is that if you abuse something, it abuses you back.

Friendship is higher than love. Sometimes, it's less glamorous, or less passionate, but it's deeper and kind of wiser, I think.

I'm never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be nervous, because they are the ones who'll be held accountable for the lives their decisions will impact the most.

It's still very difficult for me to rely. Your weakness, the blessing of your weakness is it forces you into friendships. The things that you lack, you look for in others.

I have a room, which is in my brain, and it's very, very, very... untidy! There is stuff fallen everywhere. There are some very important ideas next to dome very silly ones. There is a bottle of wine that was opened five years ago, and there is a lunch I haven't eaten from last summer. There are faces of children who are going to die but don't have to. There's my fathers face telling me to tidy up my room. So that's what I'm doing - tidying my room.

The more you experience love, the more full of it you should be. But the opposite sometimes happens, because you fear the loss of life. You fear the vulnerability that can take the goodness of it away. This might have happened because when i was just a kid, i had the sense that your whole life can change with a death in the family. It's like they say - at least i say - It's the loss of money that leads to the love of it. You know, the people who care about money are never the people who made a lot. They're the people who have lost a lot. And I think that might be true in relationships, when if you've lost somebody important to you early on, you live in fear of that the rest of your life. I suppose that's one of the things that I would fear, and that might explain the rage you referred to earlier, which is real in me, at some point, it really is. An odd thing to own up to, but I do know it's true.

I do see the good in people, but I also see the bad --- I see it in myself. I know what I'm capable of. Good and bad. It's very imnportant that we make that clear. Just because I often find a way around the darkness doesn't mean tjat I don't know it's there. (Bono)

The great gifts of models are not that they're more beautiful than the next person, it's that they're able to be photographed and not be self-conscious.

It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star. I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.

The past is not a place I like to visit. This project is forcing me to go there, to tidy up my thoughts. I'm not normally a navel-gazer. I've always thought you find yourself in other people. I'm visiting here. I don't want to set up house.

Happiness is for those who don't really need it. So I can live without happiness.

The reason I like the game chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you're in charge of them. And it's your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you've made that males you either a good or not a good chess player. It's not luck.

A degree of narcissism is necessary, I suppose, to look in the pool to see your reflection. (Bono)

There's a chasm between envy and desire. Envy is like wanting something that's not yours. But desire is different. Desire comes out of wanting what is yours, and still wanting it even if it's not yet there, but it's not envy.

People who know our music, they know who you are. They've been in the dark room, they know you better than your best friend, because you don't sing like that to your best friend, you don't sing in their ear.

Look, the job of life is to turn your negatives into positives

I think the time that I knew that I was capable of all the things that I disliked the most in other people was, oddly enough, one of the most joyful moments: when our first child was born. And I just felt this love for this beautiful little girl who was so fragile and so vulnerable. Some point around that week, I started to understand why wars were fought. I started to understand why people were capable of cruelty in order to protect themselves and their own. And I was very humbled to realise that.

I've always believed in instinct over intellect. The instinct is what you always knew; intellect is what you figure out.

I don't like to abuse alcohol-anything you abuse will abuse you back.

You have so mamy different personas. The one i meet in Dublin, the one who speaks on the phone.  There are a few other bonos: the one who writes in the morning, the one who performs in front of crowds, the one who addresses U.S congressmen, and of course the one who now sits on the board of elevation partners.  Of course the same person shelters all those different roles. All art is an attempt to identify yourself. You try out many different characters on the way to finding the one that most fits you, and therefore is you. I mean, all children do. I'm adolescence, you see them trying out different sides of their personality. So I'm just exploring and trying to find out what I'm capable of.

I think cynicism often disguises itself as humour.

I think that the camera loves peopke who...loathe the camera (Bono)

Time often is forgiving and dismissive of the influences, because they recede. We look at Sgt. Pepper and we go "wow! How did they ever think that up?" but of course, if you got into Paul McCartney's bedroom, found his record collection at the time, you would find out. But the clues are gone. It's like evolution: there are certain pure situations that hang around longer, but the ones that got them there don't have time to leave fossils. We have a giraffe, we have a horse. But where's the horse with the long neck? The link species disappear.

Where that rage comes from? Partly, I would say it's a sense that a life can be taken away from you, quickly, in a dumb second for the dumbest reason. That makes me mad, defensive and protective.

So how did you end up making a fool of yourself in front of twenty thousand people? I had a bigger hole to fill. What do you mean? A rock star is someone with a hole in his heart almost the size of his ego.

He always had this thing about him, that he wouldn't nominate himself to run in the race. But if he was put in the race, he would want to win it. It's a strange thing. He has a healthy disrespect - and respect - for his own ego. He knows what he's capable of, and he would not push himself forward. He would rather hang back in the shadows and be discovered.