“The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.”

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.

Hockey is a tough game.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

As a musician and a songwriter it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Everyone’s got one but some are blacker and wider than others. It’s a feeling of being abandoned,cut adrift in space and time-sometimes following the loss of a loved one.

It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong.

But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that’s why we came to America.

There’s no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

You don’t become an ‘artist’ unless you’ve got something missing somewhere. Blaise Pascal called it a God-shaped hole.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty,

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.

What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It’s what makes us human beings.

Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.

To get a roaster clean, send something like baked apples in it to a neighbor. Neighbors always return pans spotless, and you won’t have to use a blow torch on it like you usually do.

I think everyone’s always interested in playing a spy, right? That’s something we grow up admiring, which is so strange, but it’s just a very clever and quick world that we all want to be a part of.

The four basic ingredients for success are: you must have the will to want something; you must have the right kind of attitude.

N.Y. hip-hop is ok, but we gotta become brave again; we have to be brave enough and do something new – that’s what New York is about… New.