“I originally wrote ‘Pride’ about Ronald Reagan and the ambivalent attitude in America. It was originally meant as the sort of pride that won’t back down, that wants to build nuclear arsenals. But that wasn’t working. I remembered a wise old man who said to me, don’t try and fight darkness with light, just make the light shine brighter. I was giving Reagan too much importance then I thought Martin Luther King, there’s a man. We build the positive rather than fighting with the finger.”Bono (877)

“‘Deep In The Heart’ was a simple three-chord song idea that I’d written on the piano, about the last day I spent in Cedarwood Road, in my family house. After I left and went out on my own my father was living there by himself, and there were a lot of break-ins. Heroin addiction in the area was up and kids needed the money. Anyway, my father decided to sell the little house, and before he moved out I went back there and thought about the place, which I’d known since I was small. I remembered a sexual encounter I’d had there – “Thirteen years old, sweet as a rose, every petal of her paper-thin… Love will make you blind, creeping from behind, gets you jumping out of your skin. Deep in the heart of this place…” The simple piano piece that I had was nothing like what these guys turned it into, which was an almost jazz-like improvisation on three chords. The rhythm section turned it into a very special piece of music.”Bono (878)

“There’s another song I wrote about B.B.’s guitar, called “Lucille,” but that’s a country song.”Bono (878)

“It’s about lust, ambition and sex. The lusts I have. Sometimes, I come across as if I got into U2 to save the world, whereas I got into U2 to save my own ass. ‘Desire’ is my way out. In Downtown LA, South Central LA, the people have different ways out. The crack dealers, that’s their escape. It’s another morality, it’s wrong, but I’m not passing judgement. It’s their only way out. I’ve found mine. I’m singing about sex!”Bono (879)

“Is all about the desert.”Bono (880)

“Is all about Graceland and Vegas.”Bono (880)

“Love and sex, in and out of harmony – that’s one vein that runs through the whole album. The idea of love that you keep on hearing about in songs – love is all you need, love is the drug – what does it mean anymore? When you actually see love go wrong, that’s when you see its ugliness. The other side of love, the dark side, love stripped of the fairy dust.”Bono (880)

“It must have been part of it [Edge’s divorce – Ed]. You go through stuff with people. But we’re also plugged into a much wider world than our own personal lives, all the stuff that’s going on outside this window right now. Everywhere. We tried to fit it all in, the confusion but also the humor and irony. It’s a dark album but it’s also funny. At one stage, we were even going to call it Fear of Woman. I like that title but, y’know, would people get it? It’s good to be afraid of what you’re attracted to. That’s a big part of the record. That, and the idea of the absurd.”Bono (880)

“There’s certainly an evil feel to things like ‘Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car’. That song could be about dependency or something more sinister. It’s an electronic blues, my Robert Johnson thing. Flogging the soul to Satan.”Bono (881)

“You see, to me, that song could be seen as being totally innocent [said to the suggestion that the song is a masturbation anthem – Ed].”Bono (881)

“It’s about the power of imagination, the mind taking off in two different directions — in a Studio 54, Disco Duck setting. The falsetto was completely natural. I’ve always felt there was a fat woman trying to burst out of me. Don’t know what Freud would make of that!”Bono (881)

“It’s about a guy we knew who ended up in a bad way because of heroin addiction. Bono knew the family, he’d talked to the brothers about it. It was new for him as a lyricist, writing in the first person from someone else’s point of view. I don’t think there’s ever been a song about addiction that captures the feeling so vividly.”The Edge (882)

“This is a song about letting go. Letting go of the past, letting go of the present. Could be a country, could be a person, could be an addiction.”Bono (1303)

“Bono wrote it as a birthday present for Ali [his wife – Ed], When we recorded The Joshua Tree we liked it, but it was her song so it was different from the rest. Afterwards we realised it should have been properly finished and put on the album.”The Edge (882)

“It was written like a phone call from Hell, but the guy liked it there, People thought we were just mocking rock’n’roll stardom and all that, but actually I was just owning up to it.”Bono (883)