Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera—a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day.

Wailing, keening, trying to explain the unexplainable. Trying to release himself and anyone who will listen from the prison of a human experience that cannot explain grief.

There were rules on what you could listen to or how you could dress, a certain fundamentalism that felt not so dissimilar to what I was struggling to negotiate at home.

I was in love and becoming terrified that I would never write a truly great love song because my heart was full, not broken.

was starting to feel it was time we cut down the Joshua tree, before someone else showed up with their chainsaw.

The search for common ground starts with a search for higher ground.

The collapsed ego when you realize you are not the center of any universe, not even your own.

This perpetual longing to be filled with the extraordinary so that you begin to lose appreciation for the ordinary.