Moby's Quotes

#1. 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.

Moby

#2. Command the murderous chalices ... Drink ye harpooners! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow
Death to Moby Dick!

Herman Melville

#3. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders.

Herman Melville

#4. I will be very sad when global warming and toxins kill off all the toads and frogs and salamanders. Here's hoping we, as humans, figure out a way to be less stupid.

Moby

#5. I like being vegan, I think it's good for my health.

Moby

#6. When Britney shaves off all her hair and beats paparazzi with umbrellas - that's what celebrities are supposed to do. They're not supposed to be reasonable, middle-aged guys drinking organic tea talking about semiotics.

Moby

#7. To quote Homer Simpson, alcohol is the cause and solution to all of life's problems. I don't think there's anything wrong with drinking and drug use, if people can do it and not hurt themselves. But it got to the point where I was really hurting myself.

Moby

#8. When I first did 'Moby,' I didn't realize how taxing it would be. I was climbing fifty feet up in the air and climbing down. Literally, it's so busy, you feel you're on a ship. You're always moving; you're constantly adding clothes or taking them off, and there are many people on stage all the time!

Stephen Costello

#9. 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

#10. NASA is an utterly fascinating place, and the fact that the buildings look so anonymous almost makes it more fascinating. You walk by a generic office-park-looking building, and you have no idea what's going on inside.

Moby

#11. 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.

Moby

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

Moby

#13. Unfortunately I'm still straight. But who knows, life is complicated and maybe I'll wake up gay tomorrow! Here's hoping. And congratulations to everyone who lives in a place where they can marry the person they love, regardless of gender!

Moby

#14. New York is such a competitive place; it tears people apart. People come here and, if they can't make it in the first month, they get torn apart and they have to go back to where they came from. I don't think that's terribly healthy.

Moby

#15. My records are fairly quiet and my dj sets are really loud. And then the live shows are like a robot soul revue. So i understand people's confusion.

Moby

#16. 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.

Moby

#17. 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.

Moby

#18. 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.

Moby

#19. 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

#20. 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.

Moby

#21. 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.

Moby

#22. I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural.

Moby

#23. Then there are actors my age like Ethan Hawke, he's in 'Moby Dick,' I love his work. I've been lucky. Alfred Molina, he has real class.

Billy Boyd

#24. Do you like Moby Dick?" he asks.
"I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading.

Gabrielle Zevin

#25. Never have public feuds with anyone who's surrounded by people who carry guns.

Moby

#26. 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

#27. I love Thich Nhat Hahn. One of my favorite quotes of his (and I'm paraphrasing), he's talking about cultivating happiness, and he was saying, at the very least, just be happy you're not at the dentist right now. He was talking to someone who was having a really hard time finding joy.

Moby

#28. You can't find an uglier urban environment than the centre of Hollywood, but then you go to Griffith Park, you go to the beach, you go to the mountains, and it's rural. I live up in the Hollywood Hills and I have frogs, owls, coyotes, mountain lions - but I'm ten minutes from the centre of the city.

Moby

#29. 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.

Moby

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

Moby

#31. There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened.

Julius Erving

#32. 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.

Moby

#33. A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.

Moby

#34. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.

Herman Melville

#35. Peter held up the book he had been reading: 'Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'.
"To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure this is English," Peter said. "It's taken me most of today to get through a page.

Justin Cronin

#36. 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.

Moby

#37. Britney [Spears]'s actually kind of like a broken-down shell of a human being, that's what makes her so endearing and compelling.

Moby

#38. The moment that you impose your will on another person or animal, that's when we are allowed to say you have committed an ethical breach.

Moby

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

Moby

#40. 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.

Moby

#41. I like to quote Homer Simpson: 'I'm like a chocoholic except for alcohol.' I come from a long line of alcoholics. It's funny because when I first started making records, I was at the tail end of a period of sobriety, so I somehow got this reputation as Captain Sober.

Moby

#42. Once the pathological low self-esteem goes, that's when things go downhill.

Moby

#43. I feel like the vast majority of the world's problems would disappear if suddenly everyone on the planet were relatively self-aware and capable of honest self-love and compassion.

Moby

#44. It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.

Herman Melville

#45. To paraphrase Paul from the New Testament, he has a great soliloquy about love, where he's basically saying, if I've figured out the secrets of the universe but I don't have love, figuring out the secrets of universe means nothing.

Moby

#46. When I listen to gospel singers pouring their heart out to God, it's the act of pouring their hearts out that interests me.

Moby

#47. I see 'Ahab's Wife' as offering an alternative vision to

Moby

#48. The worst case scenario is you really like someone's work, then you meet them and they're a self-involved, entitled douchebag.

Moby

#49. A vegan who beats his wife is far further down the ethical ladder than a meat eater who's kind to his children.

Moby

#50. I feel like someone who's meditating could possibly benefit their meditation practice and their well-being just by sitting down and thinking about things that they love for ten minutes.

Moby

#51. The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still ways to go about living. It's through Ishmael that I find a kind of overall cosmic approach to a meaningful life in this meaningless world.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#52. If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#53. 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.

Moby

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

Moby

#55. When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.

Moby

#56. 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

#57. Because I've been that drunk person in the club so many thousands of times, when I'm in an environment where people are drunk or on drugs, I certainly don't judge them. Because it's almost a given that for much of my life I've been way more messed up than them.

Moby

#58. 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

#59. My father revisited Moby a lot. Maybe it's because there's no other novel in the whole world that better captures the Impossible Standard.

Niall Williams

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

Moby

#61. Melville's Moby-Dick -

John Irving

#62. The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like ... Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we're still going to live in a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand.

Moby

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. I love nyc. It's the city of my birth and probably the most amazing city on the planet.

Moby

#66. 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

#67. When I go on vacation, I take very few clothes and a whole lot of books. It's the most soothing thing in the world. Reading 'Moby-Dick' is like being in a time machine. I almost feel as excited as the first time I read it and I always find something new.

Nile Rodgers

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

Moby

#69. One simple word: ugh. Is something still considered a conspiracy if it's played out right under our noses?

Moby

#70. In some of the greatest recordings ever made, the performance is a part of the recording. Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35' is all about the esthetic of that performance. You can hear the room.

Moby

#71. No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.

Sophie Hannah

#72. You would do well to turn from Chapter XXXVI to Chapter CXXXIII without further delay, thus saving nearly a hundred chapters without anybody's knowing the difference if you keep quiet. After all, Ahab isn't the only one entitled to be a skipper.

Richard Armour

#73. 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.

Moby

#74. You know you're in a tough place in your life when you decide now's a good time to start Moby Dick.

Ben Monopoli

#75. I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal.

Ron Swanson

#76. 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

#77. 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.

Moby

#78. 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

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

Moby

#80. I saw people around me who were falling deeper and deeper into alcoholism and substance abuse. It's seductive because alcohol is amazing and drugs are amazing, they work so well.

Moby

#81. One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.

Moby

#82. The young have to kill the old. The young, if they want to achieve their own platform, have to diminish the reputations of the ones that have gone before. That's how life works.

Moby

#83. But Moby-Dick is the explanation of America. It's not just a novel. It is a book of prophecy. It is the book. It is the book of America.

Robert Stone

#84. There's a fairly extensive network of musicians on tour who are all trying to stay sober, and we generally reach out to each other and offer support when and where we can.

Moby

#85. 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

#86. The most emotional part is when I go into my studio every day and pretty much never have an idea of what's gonna happen.

Moby

#87. When famous people are nice to me, it feels good, so I'm happy to hang out with them. It's better than being at home, depressed, reading 'The Hobbit.'

Moby

#88. 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.

Moby

#89. It's enshrined in our Constitution that an individual has a right to release information and disseminate information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable.

Moby

#90. There's not a lot of precedent for weird, bald musicians in the Lower East Side making records in their bedrooms and going on to sell a lot of copies of the record. Especially if you look at the pop climate.

Moby

#91. 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

#92. Sometimes, readers, when they're young, are given, say, a book like 'Moby Dick' to read. And it is an interesting, complicated book, but it's not something that somebody who has never read a book before should be given as an example of why you'll really love to read, necessarily.

Gabrielle Zevin

#93. The thing about Moby Dick is that, at heart, it's a very simple plot - there's only one white whale in the ocean. When you're a boy growing up in a hostile home, you imagine it's unique: it's happening only to you.

Gavin O'Connor

#94. I remember the day we were hanging around the band's commune and Roger came in with the press kit for a rock band (Moby Grape) any of us had ever seen. It looked psychedelic, yet it was done by ad people. I believe the word "hype" was coined on that very day.

Cynthia Heimel

#95. I honestly just love being in my studio working on music. That's all the inspiration I need. And I don't write with an end result in mind, I just write for the simple love of writing.

Moby

#96. I was trying to convince myself I could learn to be gay - but no. That's one of my great regrets.

Moby

#97. Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.

Michael Chabon

#98. 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

#99. 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.

Moby

#100. Ketamine's such a waste of time drug. All you do when you're on ketamine is go: 'Oh, I'm on drugs. I don't feel good, I don't feel bad, I'm just on drugs ... '

Moby