Moby Quotes

I look back and think of all the times I've had to let things go in the past, and how traumatic it seemed while it was happening, but how my understanding of it changed as time passed - and oftentimes things that seem really difficult and traumatic in the short term seem a lot less difficult and traumatic in the long term. So I remind myself of that.

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

You could almost say that throughout human history there are people who can either foresee consequences or who are capable of looking for information and predicting the consequences will happen, but the vast majority of people won't respond to climate change until their city is underwater, food supply is disrupted or everyone around them is dying of zoonotic disease. It's almost like someone dealing with an addiction, like you hope that the person can overcome the addiction before the addiction kills them.

One of the reasons why fundamentalists are so aggressive in trying to promote fundamentalism is because deep down they know it's arbitrary. If you're comfortable with your belief you don't need to convince other people to agree with you.

The progressive movement needs more crazy and amoral/immoral right-wing politicians and pundits like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

If I found myself married with children and had tons of puppies and a fun place to live, I imagine I'd be happier, but I kind of like being a little bit isolated and lonely.

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.

The strange thing about hotel rooms is that they look familiar and seem familiar and have many of the accoutrements that seem domestic and familiar, but they are really weird, alien and anonymous places.

I've worked with all sorts of random people - everybody from Metallica to Britney Spears to Ozzy Osbourne to Michael Jackson to the Beastie Boys. I've got a really strange CV. It's interesting - I work with a lot of these disparate, different people to learn what it's like to work with random people.

I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that's toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.

Whether the Virgin Mary existed, I don't know. But the human need for her to appear in tortilla, that's what inspires my interest.

If we base our belief systems on the humble assumption that the complexities of the world are ontologically beyond our understanding, then maybe our belief systems will make more sense and end up causing less suffering.

When someone comes to me and says the music I've made has affected them emotionally, that's the most gratifying part of my job.

When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.

My mother and I were on welfare and food stamps until I was 18, so I've always had this ethos of, like, 'try and make a little bit of money now because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.'

Because we find somethings distasteful is not justification enough for us to deem them criminal.

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

As time passes and the more advanced science becomes, the more interesting it becomes.

You could spend every waking moment online and still only experience one-trillionth of what's out there. I find that a little overwhelming.

I think we’re like farm animals before an earthquake.

That is not all I need. I need dogs. A house filled with dogs and a smart, funny, kind, loving girlfriend or wife.

I've dated attractive people and I don't find a correlation between amorous enthusiasm and beauty and public figure status.

I realized the universe is 15 billion years old and unspeakably complicated. I still love the teachings of Christ, but I also believe that the human condition prevents us from having any true objective knowledge and understanding of the universe.

Lord, I want to be up in my heart.

As people continue to do more and buy more over the Internet, continue to meet people over the Internet, connection speeds are going to get faster, and the Internet is just going to become an even more integral part of people's lives.

The aggressive, energised, political, or even politicised, culturally aware music hasn't really existed [recently].

Somehow, magically, I've become an electronic musician, and I have a recording studio that looks like the bridge of the Enterprise.

Many of my friends back in New York and elsewhere have a glib or dismissive attitude toward Los Angeles. It's a place of strip malls and traffic and not much else, in their opinion.

Let peace and beauty reign.

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.

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

As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of making music is to get it heard by as many people as possible.

There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.

I guess...on one hand, I spent way too much time watching science fiction and reading science fiction when I was growing up. But a part of it is I also never felt much of a connection to the world in which I lived while I was growing up, and so, oddly enough, I think I felt a lot more connected to the worlds that I read about in science fiction.

It's the age old thing: If you want to get elected, blame immigrants. It worked in the 20th century and it works now, and it's heart-breaking to see people make the same mistakes. They're looking at a complicated world, but they just keep blaming immigrants, and it's really disturbing that people haven't got past that.

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.

I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.

For me, love is very non-academic. Love, it’s a very physical thing. I don’t mean physical in terms of - I mean, it can be sexual. But those moments when I’m aware of the fact that I love someone or love something, it really manifests physically.

I like the humility that comes from being hated. Hopefully some humility and compassion comes out of that.

The reason I didn't like cocaine is it made me do stupid things, have stupid conversations, and stay awake until 11 o'clock in the morning unable to think, read, sleep or speak.

I'm straight, but I love going to house music clubs and flirting with women and gay men.

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.

David Lynch is my friend, and I love his movies and his art and his music. Few things make me happier than working with him.

I love it when celebrities fall apart.

For my most of my career I've been a falling-down drunk. Most of my interviews were done hungover, and for a while it was great.

What sounds good on the radio is really loud kick drums and loud snare drums, when everything's bombastic and in your face. It's the equivalent of a houseguest who screams all the time.

Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe