MUSIC

I always thought of music as a sort of sacrament. I always felt it was the language of the Spirit. It was always a religious experience for me ー music. August 2001 ー Radio Broadcast "Elevation: The U2 Story"
 
[Music] is how we worship God, even though we don’t write religious songs, because we [don’t] feel God needs the advertising. 2005 ー Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas
 
Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous, religious argument could never do ー they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of GOD. Over art, literature, girls, my mates, the way in to my spirit was a combination of words and music. 1999 ー Selections from the Book of Psalms (Introduction by Bono) ー Pocket Canons
 
Music is the language of the spirit anyway. Its first function is praise to creation ー praise to the beauty of the woman lying next to you, or the woman you would like to lie next to you. February 2001, "Bono: The Beliefnet Interview" (Beliefnet)

…I stopped going to churches and got into a different kind of religion. Don't laugh. That's what being in a rock 'n' roll band is. Showbiz is shamanism, music is worship. Whether it's worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, whether it comes from that ancient place we call soul or simply the spinal cortex, whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire, the smoke goes upwards, to God or something you replace God with ー usually yourself. 1999 ー Selections from the Book of Psalms (Introduction by Bono) ー Pocket Canons

The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. November 3, 2005 ー Interview with Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone)

It's such an extraordinary thing, music. It is how we speak to God finally ー or how we don't. Even if we're ignoring God. It's the language of the spirit. If you believe that we contain within our skin and bones a spirit that might last longer than your time breathing in and out ー if there is a spirit, music is the thing that wakes it up. And it certainly woke mine up. And it seems to be how we communicate on another level. November 3, 2005 ー Interview with Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone)
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You can't close your eyes to what’s going in the world, but you want to hopefully make a music that tries to transcend that, and lift yourself and (if you’re lucky) other people out of that. That always been the thing with U2 ー I think there’s some light in our music. March 1, 1997 ー Interview with Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 1) 

That's... they key to all the important doors in my life, whether it's the band, or whether it's my marriage, or whether it's the community that I still live in. It's almost like the two sorts of sacraments are music and friendship. November 3, 2005 ー Interview with Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone)