Moby Quotes

I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

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

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

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.

I buy things with the best of intention of living in them and then life intercedes.

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

If one of my heroes comes to me and says, 'Do you want to work on something?' I just say, 'Yes.' I don't ask for details; I don't expect to get paid anything. I just love working with my heroes.

When I was fifteen years old, the only distinction in music my friends and I made was [that] there's music made by people with short hair and music made by people with long hair.

Whenever I've had success, I never learn from it. Success usually breeds a degree of hubris. When you fail, that's when you learn.

I've had my Charlie Sheen moments, it was usually just at the Mars Bar on the corner of First Avenue with me and a few homeless guys.

I'm sure most people have this experience: when you're young you drink, you do drugs, you stay up late, and there are no consequences.

There are a lot of public figures who, before they take a stand on a issue, they talk about it with their publicist and they figure out how it's going to affect record sales. Life is really too short to worry about that sort of thing.

I stopped drinking and realised New York still has a lot of charm, but it has become so bourgeois and affluent - and I can't really complain because I'm sort of bourgeois and affluent myself, but I like living in a place where artists and musicians and writers can actually pay the rent.

I think that, for a lot of us, the closer we get to showing people who we really are, that's where we feel the most uncomfortable, the most vulnerable. But it's also where the healthiest growth comes from. Like when I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens.

If I spend 100 days in a row making music there’s a chance nothing will come of it. But if I spend 100 days not making music it’s guaranteed that nothing will come of it. So keep working.

We almost need to cultivate - I hate to sound New Age-y - but to cultivate a positive bias, and really work to focus on those things and notice those things that are wonderful and uplifting.

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.

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.

It's almost like a sign of mental illness to base your self-worth on the opinions of complete strangers, you know?

I've made records that everyone has hated and I've loved, and made records that everyone has loved and I've deemed, at best, mediocre.

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

Nothing can stop us now 'cause we are all made of stars.

That’s why I make music. When I listen to my favorite music made by other people, that’s what it does to me. So as a musician, I’m just trying to do the same thing with music I make. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But 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.

All of us little bald white guys wearing glasses kind of look the same.

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

A few years ago, before I stopped drinking, I was feeling very sorry for myself and very drunk, and I Googled 'Moby Sucks'. In less than one second something like 20 million responses came up... yeah, there has been a lot of loathing directed towards me, and it used to drive me crazy.

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.

I'd rather be around broken people who have a degree of humility, and just get on with their work.

Doing interviews and touring are two ways that I can try to bring my music to people. It can be tiring, but it's better than working at Burger King.

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.

I don't put a lot of pressure on myself when I'm writing. It feels like if I come up with something good, or I come up with something bad, I'm not too worried.

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.

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

The average life expectancy of a celebrity is 20 years less than someone working in a coal mine.

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

I find myself for whatever reason unable to live in the apartment I renovate and have to sell.

I've done the performing monkey stuff and massive breakdowns, it's just they weren't documented.

There are so many musicians, friends of mine, who play shows for ten people a night, or always desperately wanted a record contract. So even if every person on the planet loathes me, I have nothing to complain about. My job is not a bad job, so I can't complain.

I love that vinyl is actually growing in popularity, and that there are so many great record stores.

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.

I won't complain about touring, because I really do believe that a public-figure musician complaining about being a public-figure musician is just absurd. Like, 'Boo hoo hoo! I have to stand on stage and people pay attention to me!'

It's a very strange phenomenon being hated by people you've never met. Some journalists just seem to hate me and everything I do, and it's disconcerting because I've never met this person.

I would drink and drink and then at 3 o'clock in the morning take anything that was put in front of me. And I'd sometimes be disappointed when conventional things were put in front of me. Like, I'd do a line of something and be disappointed to find it was just cocaine.

If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.

There are so many causes. Gun control, climate change, deforestation, animal welfare, human welfare, education. Working on the big issues is noble and great, but being aware of what’s going on around you right at this moment, being kind to the people around you, extending compassion and decency, not just to everyone you meet but also to yourself—I think that’s one of the biggest challenges most people face.

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.

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