Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

can write prose quite well but not as well as that gifted know-it-all Neil McCormick, who writes for the school magazine.

Author of "I was Bono's Doppelganger" which inspired the film "Killing Bono"

“the wingspan of a bee relative to the body mass makes no sense and physics cannot explain how they can fly.”

This is a myth based on misunderstanding of how air vortices work at different scales. Physics understands very well how bees can fly.

if necessary, use words.” We need less to be told how to live our lives and more to see people living inspirational lives.

The chaos of a large crowd corralled and beaten by riot police, the British army stepping in with deadly force.

Fails to mention rocks being thrown by rioters and shots being fired by the Official IRA (the Stickies).

Sands was a poetic soul arguing with his life that the Provisional IRA were fighting a war and that jailed combatants deserved the same status as any POW, such as the right not to wear a prison uniform. It was not an unreasonable request, but it seemed to pass their supporters by that the IRA didn’t observe the Geneva Convention. Or any other convention.

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.

only once does Jesus speak about judgment, and when he does, it’s about how we treat the poor:

“we’re all used to world leaders who turn out to be comedians but what a revelation to have it the other way round.”

Answer: My mother and grandmother were religious. On one table in my grandparents’ house were my grandmother’s Orthodox prayer icons. Next to it, on another table, my Communist grandfather placed his portrait of Lenin. “It’s important people don’t forget that the revolution in Russia began with the most noble ideals; my grandfather believed in those ideals.” Question: “Do you believe in God?” Answer: “No.” (Long pause.) “But I believe in the universe.”

Gorbachev is asked about his moral compass

the voice of Mikhail Gorbachev quieted to a murmur as he explained that it was that 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl that convinced him the Soviet Union could not continue as it was.

the inconvenient truth may be that the same splitting of the atom that weaponized uranium into fissile material and threatened human extinction post–World War II may now be an essential stepping-stone if we are to avoid our latest extinction event.

Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths happen in the developing world.

“Don’t you think if he’d just hung on,” Michael says, “he’d have gotten through it? If he’d glimpsed the life he could have had.”

Hutchence on Cobain

Helena and Michael’s relationship was over when Paula Yates, the wife of our close friend Bob Geldof, fell hard for Michael, and he fell further for her.

Clearing at least Hutchence of the charge of infidelity.

That we can half live with our conscience is no substitute for the fact that we can’t live at all with our friends. They are gone.

A group of defiant women had pulled together a Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant. Their sashes were inscribed with phrases like “Do you really want to kill us?”

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life They could not take your pride.

Omits the inaccurate line "Early morning April 4" (it was late afternoon). I still haven't worked out what the new re-worded line says.

Did you know, I asked him, that there isn’t a song of any note called “I Love You”?

because the problems of global inequality were mostly created by the Northern Hemisphere, it fell to those of us in the north to solve them. I recognize now how arrogant this position was. I learned a little late the wisdom in a Senegalese proverb, “If you want to cut a man’s hair, be sure he is in the room.”

Is it Northern hemisphere or is it whites?

Corruption, you’re right, Mr. Secretary, that’s as big a killer on the continent of Africa as any disease. “But that was true about all of our countries at different stages of development, including Ireland.”

When asked in 2001, more than half of evangelical Christians said they “probably or definitely would not help” even AIDS orphans.

Could you cite the source?

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

In Botswana, 38 percent of the adult population are HIV positive. Over a third of adults are going to fall ill and die.

“I hope you are not wasting our time, Mr. Bono,” she said. “Because some of us don’t have any to waste.”

THE RULES OF PREPARING TO DIE Find a family who will care for your children. Prepare a memory book for them full of love. Educate those in your community who do not have HIV. Embrace and pray for those who do. Look after each other.

these people will feel their pockets emptying as their bills pile up. They will become Donald Trump’s support base as he bids for the White House—not that there’s any evidence he’s ever seemed too bothered about their plight in the past.

I had to push her on the torture of Islamic extremists in custody. “The United States doesn’t believe in torture, as it accrues inaccurate information and invites the same practice for our own combatants.”

When Jimmy Carter sat there, it was rumored that Willie Nelson brought some pharmaceuticals with him, smoking them on the roof.

The rumour is that he did this with a member of the Carter family.

“Mr. President, paint these pills red, white, and blue if you have to, but in Africa these pills will be the best advert ever for the United States of America.”

Name one country, he asked the audience, that has benefited from foreign aid. I put my hand up. Oh, yes, Bono? I can’t wait to hear this answer … Ireland, I said. Ireland? Yes, Ireland, my country wouldn’t exist in the state it is without money from Europe. Aid from Europe has helped make Ireland into a modern economy.

We’d always seen aid as an investment—the idea being that the business of aid is to put itself out of business. However, there were plenty of examples of this not being the case. In her book Dead Aid (parodying Live Aid) the economist Dambisa Moyo had shown how aid can be misplaced and misspent and at its worst can prop up governments that are not accountable to their own people.

Many reviews of "Dead Aid" are critical of Bono and Geldof so it's interesting to see Bono compliment the book.