“There's a chasm between envy and desire. Envy is like wanting something that's not yours. But desire is different. Desire comes out of wanting what is yours, and still wanting it even if it's not yet there, but it's not envy.”

“Rage, there's a rage in me that I have to rely on others, even though I'm very good at relying on others. But at the same time it's uncomfortable at times. Think about that. Isn't that a frightening thing? You rely on your lover, you rely on your friends, and finally you have to rely in what you believe if you want to become whole. But we don't like it. We do resent our lovers, especially the idea of relying on your friends to be whole. That means that on your own, you're  (pause) that old fucking zen idea. You're the one hand clapping. (laughs)”

“I took a kind of ex-boyfriend initiative. I guess I wanted to know whether the past was still breathing inside of us. Because inasmuch as I had been irrelevant to their destiny for such a long time, I felt they had become irrelevant to my life for too many years. Unconsciously, something inside me rejected this notion and wanted to make it right.”

“He always had this thing about him, that he wouldn't nominate himself to run in the race. But if he was put in the race, he would want to win it. It's a strange thing. He has a healthy disrespect - and respect - for his own ego.He knows what he's capable of, and he would not push himself forward. He would rather hang back in the shadows and be discovered.”

“Bono: But you write. Why do you write?Michka: well, because I'm unable to express things in another way. I often believe that the words that come out of my mouth are not the ones I should be using. I can't cut things loose unless I'm really sure about them. It's good, but sometimes it's an excuse.Bono: That's often an excuse. You have to dare to fail. I think that's the big one: fear of failure. I've never had a fear of failure. Isn't that mad?Michka: that's the maddest thing, but at the same time I think that's the secret. Because you've never been afraid of making a fool of yourself, you've never been afraid of looking ridiculous.”

“The more you experience love, the more full of it you should be. But the opposite sometimes happens, because you fear the loss of life. You fear the vulnerability that can take the goodness of it away. This might have happened because when i was just a kid, i had the sense that your whole life can change with a death in the family. It's like they say - at least i say - It's the loss of money that leads to the love of it. You know, the people who care about money are never the people who made a lot. They're the people who have lost a lot. And I think that might be true in relationships, when if you've lost somebody important to you early on, you live in fear of that the rest of your life. I suppose that's one of the things that I would fear, and that might explain the rage you referred to earlier, which is real in me, at some point, it really is. An odd thing to own up to, but I do know it's true.”

“You have so mamy different personas. The one i meet in Dublin, the one who speaks on the phone. There are a few other bonos: the one who writes in the morning, the one who performs in front of crowds, the one who addresses U.S congressmen, and of course the one who now sits on the board of elevation partners. Of course the same person shelters all those different roles.All art is an attempt to identify yourself. You try out many different characters on the way to finding the one that most fits you, and therefore is you. I mean, all children do. I'm adolescence, you see them trying out different sides of their personality. So I'm just exploring and trying to find out what I'm capable of.”