Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

⚡️ 12 Quotes from the book

“Air is not the will to conquer whatever Everest you will encounter in your life, but it is the ability to endure the climb.”

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“A job is a thing where you do something you don’t really like for eight hours a day for five or six days a week in return for money to help you do the stuff on the weekend you want to do all the time.”

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“Someone has likened prayer to being on a rough sea in a small boat with no oars. All you have is a rope that, somewhere in the distance, is attached to the port. With that rope you can pull yourself closer to God. Songs are my prayers.”

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“U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera—a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day.”

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“I’m not sure a professional psychologist would agree, but something in me understands that until we deal with our most traumatic traumas, there’s a part of us that stays at the age at which we encountered them.”

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“There’s stuff you can learn from people who don’t tell you anything. Like how not to react when there is a crisis. Like how to stay still and maybe even unearth levity from the seriousness of a situation. Edge is the silence inside every noise. He’s the light inside the paint.”

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“Climbing into the ring, the best-prepared fighter is the one who has tried to understand their opponent. Especially if it’s yourself.”

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“‘Fame is currency,' I told anyone who’d listen. 'I want to spend mine on the right stuff.'”

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“The search for common ground starts with a search for higher ground. Even with your opponents. Especially with your opponents. A lightbulb moment for me and a conviction that’s informed my life as a campaigner ever since. The simple but profound idea that you don’t have to agree on everything if the one thing you do agree on is important enough.”

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“The arc of the moral universe does not bend toward justice. It has to be bent, and this requires sheer force of will. It demands our sharpest focus and most concentrated effort.”

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“Service, ambition, duty, loyalty, the desire to be the best, the desire to say yes—not such bad character traits to have cherished. I always thought of them as strengths, but lately I wonder if somewhere along the line they became a cover for something more suspicious. The demand to be at the center of the action.”

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“I stretch out my body and feel every inch of myself alive. My fingers, my toes, my neck, my torso. At this moment my aching frame is aching with aliveness.”

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