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People say, 'Why don't you do interviews? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' My job in the band is to play drums, to get up on stage and hold the band together. That's what I do. At the end of the day that's all that's important. Everything else is irrelevant.
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The less you know, the more you believe.
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I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural... something unseemly... about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It was weird enough when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2 concert... but this is really weird, isn't it?
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Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations.
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I don't think anybody could imagine the life that I've been lucky enough to have. It's been an incredible journey.
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The problem for most people as they get older is that they start to buy into their own bullshit to the extent that they just have to eliminate from their inner sanctum anyone who is going to really challenge it. But I think all bandmates of U2 were lucky enough to have the four of us respect and regard each other to the extent that we're kind of always looking out for one another, so none of us can get away with buying into the bullshit.
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One of the good things about globalization is it has created a single international music community, and I feel very much part of it.
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You see, rock and roll isn't a career or hobby - it's a life force. It's something very essential.
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Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.
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I think it's hard to come to a U2 show and just eat hot dogs and drink a soda, and not be moved by it.
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First love is alright, as far as it goes. Last love – that’s the one I’m interested in.
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What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.
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Performing at this level requires an absolute commitment and dedication. You can't half commit.
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Unfortunately, as far as the music is concerned, what defines relevance is whether you are on the radio or whether you are on the cover of a magazine or whether you're winning MTV awards, and so on and so forth.
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Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was - which was ungodly and inhuman. Ben Franklin called it what it was when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
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Advertising and art are getting all mixed up. I think some of the most exciting pieces of TV are the commercials.
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A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that's true of a lot instruments; pianos sound like pianos, but there's something about the guitar - the range of possibilities is much broader.
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The big cop-out would be to accept popularity rather than opting to try to create potent work. It's so easy to do the popular thing, the expected thing, and that's where you start to cheat yourself - and your fans, in the end - because there's an inherent dishonesty in pandering and dishing up what everyone's expecting.
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The biggest misconception about me was that I was some kind of wild, crazy rock'n'roll firework. It was an easy image to pick up on, but I'd like to think I was a little deeper than that.
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We had a street gang that was very vivid - very surreal. We were fans of Monty Python. We'd put on performances in the city center of Dublin. I'd get on the bus with a stepladder and an electric drill. Mad shit. Humor became our weapon. Just stand there, quiet - with the drill in my hand. Stupid teenage shit.
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God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
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It doesn't matter what songs we sing. I'm a drummer. Chicks dig me.
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The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.
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Then Bono arrived, and he meant to play the guitar, but he couldn't play very well, so he started to sing. He couldn't do that either. But he was such a charismatic character that he was in the band anyway, as soon as he arrived. I was in charge for the first five minutes, but as soon as Bono got there, I was out of a job.