Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

We were bonding over the reason music is made. How it is balm for the ache inside us, a dressing for the wounds we hide.

“It’s all you’ve got,” said the postman’s son. “That’s it. Your thoughts, they decide who you are.”

I remember hearing the American evangelical Tony Campolo explaining that there are 2,003 verses of scripture that relate to the poor, that poverty is second only to redemption in the priorities of the God found in the Old and New Testaments.

Los Angeles. More people live off their imagination in this city than any other.

Not unrelated is a dubious courage that when you find yourself out of your depth in troubled waters, you will discover how to swim. Another daft but true idea that creativity seems to depend on.

We’re one but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other, not that we’ve got to, just that we get to.

The songs of Kurt Cobain sounded like bare-knuckle fistfights, while Eddie Vedder performed open-heart surgery nightly, minus the fluorescent light show.

I’m drawn to conversation because in the best kind you don’t know where you’re going, only that you will get somewhere good.

If you don’t have a seat at the table you’re probably on the menu.

Poverty made us globe-trotters and we brought our discoveries home.

ideas are more portable than objects.

Ireland is a great country, but it’s not an idea. Great Britain is a great country, but it’s not an idea. America is an idea.