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.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star. I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

The idea that there is one kind of African is of course ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue for example that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

I'm home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.