Moby Quotes & Sayings

One of the goals of a spiritual practice is self-awareness, and one of the best tools of self-awareness is simple emotional vulnerability. — Moby

There is a dysfunctional strangeness to Los Angeles that doesn't exist in any other western city. The roads are crumbling, no-one knows what they're doing, the city government barely works. — Moby

I did a cover of the James Bond theme, and I felt like such a fraud, because the original is so good. — Moby

There's nothing in the actual Bible that limits a Christian in their appreciation of or interest in science. Anti-science is purely a function of ignorant fundamentalism. — Moby

I like my coffee like I like my romantic partners: cold and bitter and prone to giving me anxiety attacks. — Moby

The idea of feeling old is much more the worry of a slightly younger person. When you are getting old, that becomes - psssh - completely secondary to the absolute understanding of how short your life is. — Moby

We live in this culture where there are so many things that want us to pretend that we're not truly human. That we can be exempt from the human condition, either through intelligence or accomplishment or success or humor. But biologically we're all the same. We all get sad, we all get happy, and we all die. Anyone who pretends that that's not the case is either a sociopath or utterly delusional. — Moby

It's sometimes too easy to point fingers when circumstances dramatically go awry, but as an addict, I'm ultimately responsible for my own decisions, no matter how benign or tragic the consequences. — Moby

I'm not trying to look for pity or sympathy. I was just surprised that so many people in the world of entertainment seemed to be okay with misogyny and homophobia as long as they were profiting from it. — Moby

God took his chosen people and we are what's left. He looked at what's left and thought: I could kill you all, but let's see what happens. A little social experiment. — Moby

People assume that somehow fame and wealth will keep mortality at bay. — Moby

There is a long and interesting tradition of really marginal left-field music that becomes commercially successful. And I will, for a brief minute, fit into that tradition. — Moby

I run into a lot of people who are instantly filled with ridicule at the idea that someone wouldn't eat meat. — Moby

I know it's simple, but my main inspiration is just my love of music. I know that sounds overly naive. But it's true. — Moby

The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work. — Moby

Let peace and beauty reign. — Moby

I feel compelled to make art that on one hand reflects and sometimes almost creates like a sense of comfort when confronted with the strangeness of the world. — Moby

I'm not Catholic but the Virgin Mary fascinates me because she's like a folk hero. — Moby

But at the same time, I don't let myself regret things to the point that I'm paralyzed. — Moby

Shaving your head is acceptable. It's when you start wearing toupees and brushing your hair over that things go wrong. — Moby

Success usually breeds a degree of hubris. — Moby

It's much easier to have a diversified career as an electronic musician than it is as a drummer. Nothing against drummers. If you're a drummer, you just wait around for people to ask you to play drums. But if you have your own studio and can make music, you have the ability to approach music a lot differently. — Moby

I change my mind about things - for a while I was punk rocker, and if you weren't a punk rocker you were an apostate. Then I was a dance music enthusiast, and if you weren't a dance music enthusiast, you were an apostate. I was carnivore, and if you were a vegan, I didn't want to talk to you. Then I was vegan, and if you were a carnivore I didn't want to talk to you. — Moby

Maybe it's a form of overcompensation, but whenever I've toured, I've always needed a huge performance component. — Moby

I've never seen 'Friends;' I've never seen 'Seinfeld.' I've heard people reference these things but I've never seen them. — Moby

We need to finally accept that all sentient creatures are deserving of basic rights. I define basic rights as this -the ability to pursue life without having someone else's will involuntarily forced upon you. — Moby

Sometimes I love the marriage of art and commerce; I love Donna Summer; I like the Rolling Stones. — Moby

There's really no reason for any musician, writer, actor to ever take themselves seriously. If you work in a needle exchange, take yourself seriously. You're doing good work. If you're involved in hostage negotiations and saving lives, you can have a sense of entitlement. — Moby

As music became more profitable in the 1990s, it seemed like it attracted a lot of people who were just interested in the financial aspect of it, which is depressing. — Moby

I still never get recognized. Small, bald white guys like myself - we all kind of look the same. — Moby

I have actually found myself buying up more and more old analogue gear. I have this strange obsession with old drum machines. — Moby

I remember I went to Berlin right after the Wall came down. I first went to East Berlin, and all the buildings were old and falling down, and now when you go back to Berlin, you know you're in the East because all the buildings are brand new and very tall. — Moby

I like singing, but it's certainly not my strong point. — Moby

No one wants to be hated, in public, by lots of people. — Moby

Mainly I'm a vegan because I like animals, and I don't want to be involved in their suffering. Also, it's better for my health and for the environment. — Moby

There was a time when I was way too reliant upon other people's opinions and perspective of me. And I guess over time came to see how unhealthy that was. I mean it's almost like a sign of mental illness to base your self-worth on the opinions of complete strangers. — Moby

I love the idea of making records that people can use, records that have a sense of utility. — Moby

My secret is being not terrible at a lot of things. — Moby

My goal is to make one-not a hodgepodge, but just the sort of record that I would want to listen to. — Moby

I love to be busy. I'm envious of people who are able to take their spare time and relax. All I like to do is work. Perhaps it's lingering Calvinist guilt? — Moby

One time I was doing an interview for a gay magazine and halfway through the journalist found out I wasn't gay. He said, 'Sorry, I can't continue the interview.' Because they only had gay public figures in their magazine. I felt so crestfallen. I wanted to tell him: but I play fundraisers for gay marriage! I'd rather my kids were gay than straight!' — Moby

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music. — Moby

Twin Peaks was my religion. Well, Twin Peaks and Christianity. But at present, Twin Peaks was winning. I loved God, but at the moment I was more obsessed with Bob and Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne. — Moby

Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. — Moby

I used to have a lot of envy for those musicians who have been universally loved. — Moby

It's perfectly natural for me to sit down and talk about meditating and spiritual practice with my friends. But then I realize, how would it sound to a drunk cynical guy in London? — Moby

If someone writes a nice review of my record, I feel like I should take them out to dinner or go over and clean their apartment. — Moby

When I went to university, I was a philosophy major, but because I'm not very bright I chose to study philosophy at a performing arts school, maybe because the philosophy program there wasn't too rigorous or challenging. — Moby

For me, New York still ranks as the most beautiful and the most interesting city in the world. It is also the most varied in terms of the things it has to offer. — Moby

I'm not sure how healthy it is to shoot police helicopters with bazookas. — Moby

In some ways it's hard to see electronic music as a genre because the word "electronic" just refers to how it's made. Hip-hop is electronic music. Most reggae is electronic. Pop is electronic. House music, techno, all these sorts of ostensibly disparate genres are sort of being created with the same equipment. — Moby

Who wakes up when they're worth £120million and says, 'I'm unhappy today but if only I had an extra £2million!' — Moby

I was in bar about 15 years ago, a relationship had ended badly, I was very drunk and I thought I would convince myself to try and be gay. Like, at one point I didn't like coffee, then I learned to like it. — Moby

When I do have time to work on music, I'm kind of selfish, and would rather work on my own stuff than someone else's. — Moby

I think the most exciting thing is access to information. People's ability to document things and expose things that may have not otherwise been documented and exposed. All the information you want is available instantly, which is overwhelming, but I think can have a positive change on the political process and accountability for leaders and corporations. — Moby

Over time I just realised the world is a very complicated place, and there is not a single structured belief system that adequately and comprehensively describes every aspect of our existence. So that is my new approach to life and spirituality - I don't know anything, except on a very naive and subjective level. — Moby

The moment a career is on a quantitative downswing, your loathsomeness is sort of attenuated. — Moby

A lot of people do talk about the demise of the album, but I still believe that if an artist tries hard to make a great album, people will buy it and listen to it as an album, rather than just a collection of random songs. — Moby

These new metal bands are going out, getting drunk and going to strip clubs, and they'll be doing the same in thirty years. There isn't even an interesting self-destructive quality to it ... it's just dumb. — Moby

I like noise. It's always puzzled me why one of the goals of contemporary recording is to get rid of noise and to eliminate any element of a performance. — Moby

I'm perfectly happy for my videos to be on YouTube, whether I'm getting paid for them or not. If they're on YouTube, people will see them. If for some reason my videos get taken down from YouTube, well, I apologize. If it was up to me they'd all be up there and they'd all be free. — Moby

We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we've never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we'd always fall short. — Moby

You know, if you love something, you should love it regardless of whether it costs five dollars or 500 or 5,000 dollars. Unfortunately, that's not the way our culture works, and we do collectively buy into this idea that things that are more expensive probably have more value. — Moby

What makes me vulnerable is any genuine expression of emotion in the presence of another person. It makes me vulnerable and my inclination is, of course, immediately to back away from anything that makes me vulnerable. — Moby

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works. — Moby

If I'm walking down the street and someone stops me and says, "Oh! A song that you wrote meant a lot to me, and I listened to it after I went to my sister's funeral," that's when it hits me. — Moby

If the entire world decided to become vegan tomorrow, a whole host of the world's problems would disappear overnight. Climate change would decrease by 25 percent, deforestation would cease, rainforests would be preserved, our water- and air-quality would increase, life-expectancy rates would increase, and our rates of cancer would plummet, so certainly, with that one action of becoming vegan you are quite effectively making the world a better place. — Moby

Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue. — Moby

At the risk of sounding pedestrian, I'll be completely honest: the first thing I do in the morning is check Google News, partially because it seems sort of random and unbiased and partially because I tend to stay in hotels that don't necessarily have the fastest Internet connections. — Moby

There's no wrong way to meditate. And meditation should never be a difficult practice that leads to self criticism. — Moby

For me to speak out against the war in Iraq, you know - most of my fans are lefties anyway, so I don't really get much flack for it. — Moby

When I was in my twenties, I thought I was bulletproof. — Moby

When I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens. — Moby

I thought that my life would be spent working in a bookstore, teaching community college, and making music in my spare time that no one would be willing to listen to. — Moby

My biggest concern is trying to keep crazy Republicans out of office. — Moby

I'm envious of people who can sleep as long as they want. I have the circadian rhythm of a farmer. — Moby

I've been friends with madonna for ever. In fact she was at my 3rd solo performance in 1990, and there were only 10 people in the audience. — Moby

More often than not, whenever gossip has been written about me, the gossip is more interesting than the reality. I know some public figures hate gossip, but personally I like it because it makes my life sound more glamorous and interesting than it really is. — Moby

I'd much rather go to a Banksy art show than a Moby art show. My art is painfully naive. — Moby

I realized that I don't like touring. I'll never complain about it because no one wants to hear about a relatively successful musician complain about the hardships of staying in a hotel. — Moby

Music is just air moving around. — Moby

For me my biggest inspiration is trying to make music that effects me as much as the music made by my heroes. — Moby

There are a lot of people in the animal rights movement who can be very passionate and aggressive, and I applaud people's passion, but when people are judgmental and aggressive, all you end up doing is getting other people to turn away in irritation. To change people's minds, you have to respect the people you're talking to. — Moby

Music can always serve a role in people's lives when it's emotional and warm and inviting and beautiful. — Moby

One of the nice things about licensing music to movies or advertisements is you can reach a lot of people who normally wouldn't hear music. — Moby

My goal with everything that I do is to present things in a way that I would want to see if I was in the audience or buying the record. — Moby

I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. — Moby

I've been having a midlife crisis since I was four years old. — Moby

I'm a terrible cook, so I usually eat out with friends. — Moby

I was on food stamps until I was 18 and became an adult. — Moby

Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing. — Moby

It's heartbreaking that so many hundreds of millions of people around the world are desperate for the right to vote, but here in America people stay home on election day. — Moby

When I was a drunk, New York was the greatest place in the world. You walk everywhere, everything is open until four in the morning, and people go to New York looking for debauchery. — Moby

If I were to be really petulant, I would say New York is the one doing the betraying. Because the New York I fell in love with doesn't really exist anymore. — Moby

I spent so much of my life reading about spirituality and reading about neuroscience and trying different meditation practices. It's a really big part of my life. But it's sometimes hard to talk about. There are so many people in the world who don't live in Southern California and don't spend their time meditating. — Moby

There are some public figures who are very private and almost hide behind their work. I try to be as open as possible. — Moby

I see 'Ahab's Wife' as offering an alternative vision to — Moby

If someone is cynical and doesn't vote and ends up with a crummy job in a crummy country with a decimated environment, they only have themselves to blame. — Moby

I wish I could sing. I don't technically have a terrible voice, but it's certainly not as good as most of my friends. Whenever I hear myself on a record, it just reminds me I'm not a very good singer. — Moby

As long as the world continues to be strange and interesting, I still want to take pictures of it. — Moby