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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.

-Moby

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You Can Sit Down

Moby

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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.

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Once The Pathological Low Self-esteem Goes, That's When Things Go Downhill.

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I Feel Like Sometimes We Have To Be A Little Less Inclusive And Tolerant If Other People's Opinions Could Lead To The Destruction Of Our Species.

I Find Myself For Whatever Reason Unable To Live In The Apartment I Renovate And Have To Sell.

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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.

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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.

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Old People Go To The Polls Because They Can't Get Erections, Young People Stay Home, Do Drugs And Have Sex.

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Meditation Practice

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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.

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Nasa Is An Utterly Fascinating Place, And The Fact That The Buildings Look So Anonymous Almost Make It More Fascinating. You Walk By A Generic Office-park-looking Building, And You Have No Idea What's Going On Inside.

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I've Experienced Tons Of Failure. I've Been Making Music For 30 Years, And I'd Say Failure And Success Have Happened In Equal Measure.

Success And Failure

Success Usually Breeds A Degree Of Hubris.

When I Went To University, I Was A Philosophy Major, But Because I'm Not Very Bright I Chose To Study Philosophy At A Performing Arts School, Maybe Because The Philosophy Program There Wasn't Too Rigorous Or Challenging.

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There Are Viable (and Usually Better) Alternatives To The Use Of Animals For Food, Sport, Clothing, & Experimentation. I Beg You To Discontinue Any Actions That Might Cause Or Condone Animal Torture, Abuse, Or Destruction.

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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 Truly Believe, As An Institution, Most Major Labels Should Just Die.

Could You Look An Animal In The Eyes And Say To It, 'my Appetite Is More Important Than Your Suffering'?

One Time I Was Doing An Interview For A Gay Magazine And Halfway Through The Journalist Found Out I Wasn't Gay. He Said, 'sorry, I Can't Continue The Interview.' Because They Only Had Gay Public Figures In Their Magazine. I Felt So Crestfallen. I Wanted To Tell Him: But I Play Fundraisers For Gay Marriage! I'd Rather My Kids Were Gay Than Straight!'

The Average Life Expectancy Of A Celebrity Is 20 Years Less Than Someone Working In A Coal Mine.

There Are Certain Songs That If People Come Up To Me And Tell Me How Much That Song Meant To Them, I Think, You Should Have Better Taste, Then, Because I Don't Really Like That Song.

If You Look At The History Of Demagoguery And Fascism, It Always Happens When There Are Two Things. It Requires A Gentle Populace To Allow It To Happen, Whether Through Laziness, Ignorance Or Ineptitude, But It Also Requires A Very Angry, Dissatisfied Section Of The Populace Who Want Egregiously Simple Answers To Very Complicated Problems.

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.

I'm A Weird, Bald Musician Who Makes Records In His Bedroom And Lives In The Lower East Side.

Growing Up In Connecticut, All The Colonial Houses Looked Alike. In Los Angeles, The Diversity Is So Extreme, It's Baffling.

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.

I Think The Word 'blog' Is An Ugly Word. I Just Don't Know Why People Can't Use The Word 'journal.'

I've Dated Some Very Enthusiastic, Attractive People And Some Very Unenthusiastic, Less Attractive People. I See No Correlation. But Female Friends Of Mine Who Have Dated Male Public Figures Have Found That Is The Case. They Say Male Models Are Terrible In Bed, Because They Feel Like Just Showing Up Is All The Effort They Need To Make.

Being A Vegan Is Pretty Easy These Days, As Almost Every Town And City Has Health Food Stores And Vegetarian-friendly Restaurants.

I Was Trying To Convince Myself I Could Learn To Be Gay - But No. That's One Of My Great Regrets.

I Have To Say That Being A Vegan In 1986 Or Whenever Was A Lot Different Than Being A Vegan In 2012. You'd Go To Health Foods Stores And Basically Your Choice Was Between Mung Beans And Nutritional Yeast, And That's About It.

The Only Sort Of Descriptive Adjective Or Catch Phrase For My Music Would Be 'eclectic.'

My Secret Is Being Not Terrible At A Lot Of Things.

I Taught Bible Study, And There Was Period Where I Thought All Of My Beliefs Were Right, And Everybody Who Disagreed With Me Was Wrong.

I Spent So Much Of My Life Reading About Spirituality And Reading About Neuroscience And Trying Different Meditation Practices. It's A Really Big Part Of My Life. But It's Sometimes Hard To Talk About. There Are So Many People In The World Who Don't Live In Southern California And Don't Spend Their Time Meditating.

It Will Be Interesting To See What The Long Term Fruits Of Our National Apathy Will Be, 'cos So Far They've Been Pretty Foul.

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.

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.

My Main Interest Is Just To Work With People Who Have Beautiful, Interesting, Emotive Voices; I'm Not Too Concerned Whether Someone Is Famous.

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.'

When I Can Really Open Myself Up To Someone And Show Someone Who I Really Am, It's Amazing When It Happens.

It’s Perfectly Natural For Me To Sit Down And Talk About Meditating And Spiritual Practice With My Friends. But Then I Realize, How Would It Sound To A Drunk Cynical Guy In London?

I'd Just Rather Have A Really Sharp, Interesting, Smart Gay Son Than Some Big Dumb Hetero Meathead.

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.

When I Was Growing Up I Was An Atheist, Then An Agnostic, And Then I Had A Good Eight Or Ten Years Of Being Quite A Serious Christian.

I Feel Like People Might Be Slightly Less Inclined To Hate Me As Much As They Did In The Past, And I Think Part Of That Is Selling Fewer Records.

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.

I Was In Bar About 15 Years Ago, A Relationship Had Ended Badly, I Was Very Drunk And I Thought I Would Convince Myself To Try And Be Gay. Like, At One Point I Didn't Like Coffee, Then I Learned To Like It.

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.

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.

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.

I Have Nothing Against Bombastic Music, But When It Comes To Making Albums, I'd Prefer To Make Music That Has A Sort Of Vulnerable Subtlety To It.

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 Think That The Current Climate Enables A Lot Of Musicians To Do Relatively Well. Twenty-five Years Ago, You Could Be A Bass Player In A Folk-rock Band And Do Pretty Well - That Sort Of Means That You're Going To Have To Go Get A Day Job. But A Lot Of My Friends Have Learned How To Write Classical Music For Movies And Produce Other People And Do Remixes, And Dj And Go On Tour, And Do All These Different Things. The More Diverse Their Approach, The Better Their Chances Of Actually Having A Career.

In 1992 I Was Doing One Of My First Ever Tours And I Was In Heathrow Airport And I Saw These Middle-aged Musicians Who Had Clearly Been On Tour For Decades, And They All Looked Haggard And Unhappy And Unhealthy. I Vowed To Myself That I Would Never Be That Person. Flash Forward 20 Years And I Found Myself In Heathrow Looking Haggard And Unhappy And Unhealthy. I Decided I Would Rather Spend My Time Staying Home Working On Music And Making Dinner With Friends, Instead Of Spending Six Months In A Hotel In A State Of Depressing Suspended Adolescence.

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.

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.

I Remember I Went To Berlin Right After The Wall Came Down. I First Went To East Berlin, And All The Buildings Were Old And Falling Down, And Now When You Go Back To Berlin, You Know You're In The East Because All The Buildings Are Brand New And Very Tall.

The Midlife Crisis You're Having At 30 Is Indulgent, But The Midlife Crisis You Have At 45 Is To An Extent Thrust Upon You.

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.

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.

Sometimes I Love The Marriage Of Art And Commerce; I Love Donna Summer; I Like The Rolling Stones.

I'm Not Catholic But The Virgin Mary Fascinates Me Because She's Like A Folk Hero.

That's The One Thing You Wake Up With Every Day: How Long Have I Got Left? And That's The Saddest Thing In The World, Because You Have This Absolute Realization That Everything You Love You're Going To Have To Let Go Of And Give Up. I Look At My Daughter And I Think, There's Going To Be A Point Where I'm Not Going To Be Around For Her. Even The Thought Of That Breaks My Heart.

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.

When I Was Growing Up, All I Wanted To Do Was Fit In, But If You're Perpetually An Outsider, It Gives You A Perspective That Might Have A Little More Objectivity Than People Who Really Feel Connected To Their Social Environment In Which They Grow Up.

I Sort Of Use As My Guiding Principle That Show The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. Whenever Possible, Do The Stupid Thing.

Guiding Principles

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.

The Idea Of Feeling Old Is Much More The Worry Of A Slightly Younger Person. When You Are Getting Old, That Becomes - Psssh - Completely Secondary To The Absolute Understanding Of How Short Your Life Is.

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.

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.

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.

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