'I actually really like that lyric. It was written really quickly. I think it expresses - the thing of language again. This thing of speaking in tongues. Looking for a way out of language. 'I try to sing this song... I try to stand up but I can't find my feet...' And taking this Latin thing, this hymn thing. It's so outrageous at the end going to the full Latin whack. That still makes me smile. It's so wonderfully mad and epic and operatic.
And of course 'Gloria' is about a woman in the Van Morrison sense. Being an Irish band, you're conscious of that. And I think that what happened at that moment was very interesting: people saw that you could actually write about a woman in the spiritual sense and that you could write about God in the sexual sense. And that was a moment. Because before that there had been a line. That you can actually sing to God, but it might be a woman? Now you can pretend it's about God, but not a woman!'

Bono, speaking to John Waters, for the book Race of Angels