“Gavin Friday, one of my friends from Cedarwood Road [in Dublin – Ed], has written one of my favorite songs. It is called “The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing,” about this character in Dublin, back when we were growing up, called the Diceman, who died at 42, five years after he was diagnosed with HIV. I realized only recently that “Love Is All We Have Left” is my attempt to write that song.”Bono (1154)

“I was imagining a science-fiction Frank Sinatra. “Love and love is all we have left.” It’s almost comic in one sense, except it rips your heart out. Tragic comedy. I thought it would be interesting to write a song from the point of view of a person who maybe wouldn’t sing another song. One of the things I ask myself on this album is, “If you have one thing to say, what is it? If this is all we are left with, I am content with it – love.”Bono (1154)

“What I wanted to do on this album is to occasionally have a dialectical conversation where younger me assails the older me. And so you have that voice in “Love Is All We Have Left”: “Now, you’re at the other side of the telescope/Seven billion stars in her eyes/So many stars, so many ways of seeing/Hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It is the innocent you speaking to the experienced you and saying it is OK. I have come to some peace with that younger zealot that I used to be. And I think that that younger zealot wouldn’t disapprove of where I have ended up. Maybe the process of getting there he might not have liked.”Bono (1154)

“There is a Bob Dylan reference in that song; I’ll just tell you ’cause I know you love Bob. It goes, “Hey, now, do you know my name? Where I’m going? If I can’t get an answer in your eyes, I see it, the lights of home.” At least in my head, the reference is to one of my favorite Dylan songs, “Señor Señor.” In that song, he meets an angel and he, like, goes on this ride with him. I have always imagined it is the angel of death.”Bono (1154)

“That’s non-romanticized love. The love that people make, the deals that people make to stay together. What Yeats calls “cold passion.” I love the idea that great relationships have a lower temperature. Ali and I are probably more in love now than when we got together in the first place. I don’t think it is given much credit, but when people work through their problems and stay together – “Ordinary Love” is that. I hope it’s interesting to write love songs. Not the hundreds of thousands of songs about passion and losing your mind to love. Isn’t it interesting to write cold, measured, how-we-got-here songs?”Bono (1154)

“Getting home – that is the big key for me. I can’t believe it because I grew up sleeping on people’s couches, sleeping on their floor, running away to the circus and joining a rock & roll band. It has taken me a long time, but I think I finally came home. But the only way I could say that is with some humor. And so on “Landlady,” there is a little faux Bob Dylan line, which is “I’ll never know what starving poets meant ’cause when I was broke it was you that always paid the rent.” I have learned a lot from Bob Dylan over the years, and one thing I’ve learned is that at your most serious moment you need humor.”Bono (1154)

“It has taken me a long time to figure out where home is. I left home probably the week my mother died [when Bono was 14 – Ed]. I mean, I stayed there on [childhood home – Ed] 10 Cedarwood Road for the next few years, but I wasn’t really there. On Songs of Innocence, “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” explains the realization that I had, while sitting there, moved address. I was with the band. The band was where I live. They were another family.”Bono (1154)

“There is a guy working with Ryan Tedder, who wrote a beautiful little guitar part. And this was Edge going through his little excitement, saying, “Oh, if you want something, you just ask for it. Like hip-hop, sample it. Sample it, or replay it.” It was a great freedom for him. So that was part of the spirit of this record too. It was like, “Let’s look in places you don’t normally look.” And so we got this beautiful mood, and we have this beautiful melodic sort of almost ode to the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas, and then found the twist. And the twist is the west coast of Syria. And not the west coast of Ireland or California, as a lot of people have reviewed it as.”Bono (1154)

“This is surely the bleakest era since Nixon. It surely undermines the very idea of America, what is going on now. And Republicans know it, Democrats know it – no one’s coming off well here. We know some who should know better have tried to piggyback the man’s celebrity to get stuff done. They will live to regret it. Before I went out against him in the primaries, I called a lot of Republican friends that I have and said, “I can’t in all conscience be quiet as this hostile takeover of your party and perhaps the country happens.” And I made the quote, and I still stand by it, “America is the greatest idea the world has ever had, and this is potentially the worst idea that has ever happened to it.” Ireland is a very nice country. France is a great country. Great Britain is a great country, but it is not an idea. America is an idea, and it’s a great idea. And the world feels a stake in that idea. We want you, it, to succeed, which is why we become fucking obnoxious and shoot our mouths off about it. The world needs America to succeed, now more than ever.”Bono (1154)