Top 99 Moby Quotes

My uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn’t very good, but my pronunciation isn’t terrible.

In the long, nonillustrious history of white people pilfering African American culture, have I just perpetrated that? I’m motivated by a love for the music and by a love of the performances, and I really hope I haven’t done anything bad.

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.

There are a lot of great animal rights organizations who save dogs and save cats, but the Humane Society is actually really good at working with Congress and getting legislation actually passed.

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 walk out my front door in New York and I’m out on the street and there are people everywhere. L.A. is so much more spread out, so it’s really easy in L.A. to have a little more isolation and to just not see as many people.

If I was a sex symbol, I would be getting laid a lot more than I am now.

Every single day the world seems like it is on the brink of falling apart. But then I look outside my window, and things look about the same as they did a week ago. It’s almost a form of cognitive dissonance.

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.

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

I love going on tour and playing music for people.

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.

I need an audience way more than an audience needs me.

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

I’d much rather go out and have music randomly presented to me by different DJs than stay home and discover it on my own.

I’ll look through ‘Us Weekly’ and I’ll see a picture of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston. And I’m like, ‘Wow, they just… they look so good. Even if they’re like just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, they still look great.’

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.

I’m like a monk with a taste for hookers.

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

I don’t know many artists who are happy with themselves all of the time.

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.

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.

Dogs have boundless enthusiasm but no sense of shame. I should have a dog as a life coach.

I met Elton John at an Interview dinner, and we just sort of became friends. He’s got such a wicked sense of humor.

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.

In the course of my life, I’ve made some happy songs but it’s the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you’ll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music.

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.

For years, my mom dated a man who was really active in the Baptist church in the town next to the town I grew up in, and so he used to drag me to these Baptist church services that lasted forever. I remember that I didn’t like the church services, but I really liked the music.

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.

I grew up obsessed with science fiction, and when I was really young, I wanted to be a scientist.

Call me a nerd if you like, but I do find it hard to leave home without my laptop and a good book.

You make mistakes and you learn from them.

As a New Yorker you can’t help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

I think that Eminem is very talented and remarkably bright, and I actually do like a lot of his music.

Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn’t exist.

There might be a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats on key social issues like women’s rights and health care. But when it comes to taking corporate cash, they’re pretty much the same beast.

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

I love the fact that no one’s ever bought my record because they were enamoured of the way I look. Maybe one person. There must be someone out there with compromised taste.

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.

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

My job of being a musician in a recording studio has nothing to do with being a musician being on tour performing.

The good thing about not being drop-dead gorgeous is that as time passes, I don’t have much to worry about. I have friends who are actors and every day they look in the mirror with trepidation.

If you and I become vegans, the global consequences aren’t going to be that much. But if we can get a few hundred million people to become a little more aware and cut back on their animal consumption, the consequences will be great.

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.

I believe that the role of limited government should be looking after the needs of veterans, the elderly, children and those institutions that improve the quality of life for struggling families – I don’t believe that government should bend to serve the needs of subsidized multi-national corporations and entitled billionaires.

I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.

I’m obsessed with politics, and I talk about it any chance I can get. I have strong opinions about how the world should be run.

If a musician is making a mediocre, self-indulgent body of work, they have to know that, for the most part, people aren’t going to be interested.

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.

I always feel kind of absurd and presumptuous presenting a speech.

A part of me wants to sort of try and sound cool and feed this myth that I’m some sort of glamorous lothario, but I was raised by women – my mother and her mother and my aunts – and as a result, most of my friends have always been women.

In 1991 I did an interview wherein I described myself as a ‘teetotal Christian,’ which was an exaggeration, although I do like tea and Christ.

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.

A lot of my friends who grew up in Manhattan have a strange phobia about Brooklyn. It’s big and scary and they get lost.

Scotland is one of my favourite places to perform: it’s really something special. Scottish audiences are just so enthusiastic; their approach to dance music just feels similar to my own somehow.

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

When public figures think they can open a business even though they’ve got no business experience, it’s a bad idea.

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.

Music is just air moving around.

Have I dated a supermodel? Of course not. I’d look ridiculous.

If there is true evil in the world – it is Republican conservatives.

I made a record in 1996 called ‘Animal Rights’ that was a very difficult, very dark punk-rock record. Of all the records I’ve made, it’s my favorite one. It’s also the one that got the worst reviews and sold the worst.

People have always been resistant to change. If you go back to the 17th, 18th century, playing guitar was frowned upon. When rock n’ roll first started, no one took it seriously.