Moby

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

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.

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.

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

When you say 'failure,' that seems really dramatic, but a lot of failure is just really depressing and mundane. I remember the first time I ever played a concert in Italy. I played a venue that held 900 people, and I think five people showed up. It wasn't a big, 'John Carter of Mars' type failure. It wasn't dramatic; it was just depressing.

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.

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

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.

We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we've never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we'd always fall short.

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.

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.

There is nothing terribly wrong with my face, even if some of its parts aren't very inspiring.

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.

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.

When I was growing up, albums were my closest friends, as sad as that may sound - Joy Division's 'Closer,' or Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Heaven Up Here'... I had a more intimate relationship with those records than I did with most of the people in my life.

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

I wasn't raised Catholic; I just really like the image of a neutral and benign Mary floating around somewhere, being nice to people.

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.

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.

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

I was never encouraged to believe anything. I was brought up in a profoundly agnostic or pantheistic community.

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.

A lot of times good, pristine recordings prevent the listener from getting emotionally involved in the music.

The only sort of descriptive adjective or catch phrase for my music would be 'eclectic.'

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.

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.

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

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

I joined Facebook purely so I could play online Scrabble. You have eight tiles instead of seven, so you tend to have higher scores. I'm somewhere between 400 and 500.

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

Every time you read an interview with a supermodel, they're always like, 'Oh, I was a such nerd.' I resent that a little bit. I was in the A/V club. I used to eat my lunch in a closet.

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.

If someone is cynical and doesn't vote and ends up with a crummy job in a crummy country with a decimated environment, they only have themselves to blame.

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.

I may be a lifelong 'downtowner,' but Central Park really is the most amazing and the most beautiful part of New York City.

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

If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.

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.

If you care about women's rights, you can't not vote.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I don't sleep very well when I travel. And as a result, I tend to be awake in cities when everyone else is asleep.

Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.

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.

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

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

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!'

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

I've had insomnia since I was a little kid and I never sleep well. Sometimes I sleep very badly and sometimes I sleep slightly badly. I get it especially when I'm on tour because you cross a lot of time zones, and I'm not very adaptable.

I don't really trust men who claim they are not interested in porn.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants.

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.

I'd much rather go to a Banksy art show than a Moby art show. My art is painfully naive.

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.

Punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business.

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.

For better or worse, I'm interested in just about everything: every different type of music I can imagine. I can never see a reason to choose just one type of music at the exclusion of everything else. Different types of music are capable of being rewarding in different kinds of ways.

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

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

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

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.

The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work.

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 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.

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.

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.

I love going on tour and playing music for people.

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?

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

But on a utilitarian level, I realize that to try to accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number of people, sometimes we have to become salesmen for what we believe, and part of being a salesman is being effective.

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

The term 'renaissance man' is always bandied about. I don't think that applies to me. You think about Leonardo da Vinci, and he was a painter and a physicist and an architect, and that is a true renaissance man.

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

I'd just rather have a really sharp, interesting, smart gay son than some big dumb hetero meathead.

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

You can sit down with Reason or Ableton and literally in a couple of hours make a very good-sounding record. But then a lot of people become contented with that, rather than pushing themselves to making something that sounds great.

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.

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.

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.

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.

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

When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.

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.

Some of the songs I've made, I'm really disappointed in how I mixed them.

You make mistakes and you learn from them.

I may be a lifelong downtowner but Central Park really is the most amazing and the most beautiful part of New York City.

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.

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