Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

Air is not the will to conquer whatever Everest you will encounter in your life, but it is the ability to endure the climb.

As we do before every show, we pray.

To be useful is a curious prayer. Unromantic. A little dull even, but it’s at the heart of who we are and why we’re still here as a band. Men who met as boys. Men who have broken the promise that’s at the very heart of rock ’n’ roll, which is that you can have the world but in return the world will have you. You can have your messiah complex, but you must die on a cross aged thirty-three, or everyone has the right to ask for their money back. We’ve turned them down. So far.

What’s on offer is our band as a chemistry set, a chemical reaction between our audience and us. That’s what makes a good band great.

I am leaving home to find home. And I am singing.

A job is a thing where you do something you don’t really like for eight hours a day for five or six days a week in return for money to help you do the stuff on the weekend you want to do all the time.

Someone has likened prayer to being on a rough sea in a small boat with no oars. All you have is a rope that, somewhere in the distance, is attached to the port. With that rope you can pull yourself closer to God. Songs are my prayers.

I am a baritone who thinks he’s a tenor.

We can debate whether information or matter is at the heart of the physical universe, but there is no argument that the essential building block of the rock ’n’ roll solar system is the van.

I felt the pinch of wonder.

I knew there was darkness in the world, but I was sure it would not overpower us; rather, we would let ourselves be overpowered by the beauty of our discoveries as we traveled through this world.

We met all kinds of unexpected strangers who encouraged us to find the answer to a simple prayer: In a broken world how could this band play any role?

“Go into the world to preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.” We need less to be told how to live our lives and more to see people living inspirational lives. I’m also deeply conscious that I can’t live up to the badge I’ve pinned to my lapel. I’m a follower of Christ who can’t keep up. I can’t keep up with the ideas that have me on the pilgrimage in the first place.

A religion that can so punish and degrade people is likely not being honest to God. Religion can be the biggest obstacle in your path.

“I don’t know how to do this, but I’ve found someone who can teach me.”

“My father taught me never to appear more than you are and always to be more than you appear.”

Without the band, I can’t make the music I hear in my head. Without my partner, I can’t be the man I aspire to be. I succeed only through collaboration.

Let the Trumpet Sound, the story of the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr., by Stephen B. Oates.

The search for common ground starts with a search for higher ground. Even with your opponents. Especially with your opponents.

As I started visiting influential religious leaders, I reminded them of those 2,003 verses in the Bible relating to the poor and that, after personal redemption, concern for the poor is the dominant motif in the whole book.

Love thy neighbor, I used to say, is not advice. It’s a command. Right? Whoever our neighbor is. Wherever.

“The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.”

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”