Top 350 Moby Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “Everyone feels awkward, everyone feels uncomfortable, everyone gets older, everyone gets lonely, everyone gets sick, everyone eventually dies.”

— Moby

304. “Shaving your head is acceptable. It’s when you start wearing toupees and brushing your hair over that things go wrong.”

— Moby

305. “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

306. “I truly believe, as an institution, most major labels should just die.”

— Moby

307. “I was trying to convince myself I could learn to be gay – but no. That’s one of my great regrets.”

— Moby

308. “Some of the songs I’ve made, I’m really disappointed in how I mixed them.”

— Moby

309. “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.”

— Moby

310. “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.”

— Moby

311. “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.”

— Moby

312. “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

313. “I have no perspective as regards my work. One reason I put out records and books is people respond to it, and it enables you to actually see the work more clearly. It’s a form of therapy for me. Sometimes abusive therapy.”

— Moby

314. “This whole world is run by brutes for the common and the stupid.”

— Moby

315. “I always just made music that resonates with me emotionally.”

— Moby

316. “When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music.”

— Moby

317. “I need an audience way more than an audience needs me.”

— Moby

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

321. “I find London really exciting but there’s a lot of vicious success here. Like New York, there’s a lot of incredibly successful people who feel incredibly entitled, perhaps justifiably, but I don’t want to be around viciously entitled people.”

— Moby

322. “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.”

— Moby

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

— Moby

324. “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.”

— Moby

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

— Moby

326. “When ‘Play’ first came out, journalists didn’t review it; it didn’t get radio play. And then it became this big successful record and, I hate to admit this, I found myself liking the fame. I bought into it.”

— Moby

327. “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.”

— Moby

328. “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

329. “Never have public feuds with anyone who’s surrounded by people who carry guns.”

— Moby

330. “Up until I started working with him, I had thought that music was a nice thing that I enjoyed and liked making, but it wasn’t a serious healing modality. What Dr. Sacks has proven is that music is actually a quantifiable, profound healing modality.”

— Moby

331. “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

332. “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

333. “Here was long period on my life when I was very disappointed by the fact I wasn’t gay. Because I grew up going to gay clubs, living in New York and LA, both very gay cities.”

— Moby

334. “An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music.”

— Moby

335. “If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.”

— Moby

336. “I wanted to have a title that wasn’t in English so that someone in France, for instance, could ask for ‘dix-huit’ or the someone in Japan could ask for ‘juhachi.’”

— Moby

337. “I think it’d be great if Prince made an album of just romantic, slow ballads.”

— Moby

338. “I read the New Testament, specifically the gospels and I was struck at their divinity, feeling that humans could not have figured this out on their own. We’re just not bright enough.”

— Moby

339. “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.”

— Moby

340. “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

341. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song’s hook.”

— Moby

342. “So in 1987 I gave up all animal products and became a vegan. Simply so that I could eat and live in accordance with my beliefs that animals have their own lives, that they’re entitled to their own lives and that contributing to animal suffering is something that I don’t want to be a part of.”

— Moby

343. “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

344. “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

345. “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.”

— Moby

346. “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

347. “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.”

— Moby

348. “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.”

— Moby

349. “I find the fact that so few people buy albums to be strangely emancipating. There’s absolutely no reason for 99% of musicians making albums to think about actually selling albums. So as a musician you can just make an album for the love of making albums.”

— Moby

350. “Moby lives the simplest of any person I think I know.”

— Moby