Famous Quotes & Sayings

M.I.A. Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 83 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by M.I.A..

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Famous Quotes By M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1884455

When we moved to England in 1986, I was ten years old and I didn't know anything about punk or hip hop. The only words I knew in English were 'dance' and 'Michael Jackson.' We got put in a flat in Mitchum, and the council gave us second hand furniture, second hand clothes and a second hand radio that I took to bed with me every night. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1534401

My father had no influence on my political beliefs, and to imply otherwise is wrong and irresponsible. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1027359

I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1573250

That's what New York is like - you can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 231999

The consequence of making it a business thing and making an artist the same as a Wall Street trader is that you do get a robot by the end of it. It becomes more robotic as opposed to being more soulful. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 445763

You can't turn up at college in stilettos and say you're gonna be a filmmaker. In the college, they were teaching me avant-garde filmmaking, where I had to make films that were, like, an hour long about nothing. I just refused to do it. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1290865

It's a bit weird, because I don't really know what people expect or think being political is; I just don't get it. What am I supposed to do as a pop star-stroke-revolutionary? Get up and put my balaclava on, go to the grocery store and then invent some Google viruses, and then go to rob a bank to fund my revolution on YouTube? — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1045099

By the time it came to the 90s, the late 90s, being a businessman was the beacon to uphold. We've been having the concept of the best rapper equals the best businessman ... — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1318342

It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 707178

Matangi's mantra is aim, which is MIA backwards. She fights for freedom of speech and stands for truth, and lives in the ghetto because her dad was the first person in Hindu mythology who came from the 'hood, but had gained enlightenment through not being a Brahmin. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1302754

My statements aren't incomplete, they're just in-progress. It's a debate and a discussion. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1231919

I don't support terrorism and never have. As a Sri Lankan that fled war and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1014743

I don't really see a difference in independent and major labels. To me, it's pretty much the same. There used to be a difference between indies and major labels, but I don't think there is anymore. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1363006

Madonna did amazing songs. She had an amazing sense of style, without a stylist. And she was flawed, and sometimes she admitted it. I'll fight the fight for Madonna. I think she should send me some chocolates or something to thank me. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2263964

I don't intentionally go: 'Ooh, what is provocative,' and try to do that. I just do stuff, and people go: 'Ooh, that's provocative.' — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1378373

I never pigeonhole myself into any religion, but I feel it has found me. I am trying to make sense of it ... the essence of the Mathangi concept. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2083631

I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1243919

Manhattan seems pretty developed, you know what I mean? Like, it has peaked in culture. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2258022

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2150723

My record label always says you shouldn't talk about money because it makes people extremely uncomfortable. Refugees can't talk about money. Rappers can talk about money; refugees can't talk about money. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1318901

What really drives me mad about art is that, in America, the only thing you can do is to take it apart. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2134701

Nike is the uniform for kids all over the world, and African design has been killed by Nike. Africans no longer want to wear their own designs. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1382532

Before the Greeks were the Tamils. The Tamils are one of the oldest civilizations that's still surviving. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2111352

Tamils all over the world have a sense of belonging to the world itself, but our ancient roots come from India. I would like to explore India. I will keep coming back. This is the closest I can get to home. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1430158

That's what's inspiring to me-finding someplace where people haven't already seen themselves in a certain light. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1454704

Art is supposed to be about creativity. But the same people are the same art darlings every month, and it's a bit annoying. It's supposed to be diverse and interesting and conceptual and have weird concepts in a comfortable place. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1490135

I already feel that I am making a political statement by sticking around in music, when I am doing it so differently to everyone else. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1519013

In New York, everyone's really neurotic and talks about themselves all the time. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2106616

That's what I miss, being a real human. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1524843

It is a coincidence that Mathangi is the Goddess of Music and the spoken word, which can be rap. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2103218

Businessmen in society are not going to be the ones that promote anything outside of money. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1917663

'Paper Planes' was an accident. It wasn't a song we made for the masses. It took two years to get popular, and there were many fights about censoring the gunshot sounds. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2069888

When I started off in England, HMV or Tower Records would come to meetings and be, like, 'We just don't know what this genre is.' I don't really fit in between Rihanna and Beyonce. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 2057319

At college, she found the fashion courses "disposable" and more current than the film texts that she studied.[14] Maya told Arthur magazine "[Students there were] exploring apathy, dressing up in some pigeon outfit, or running around conceptualising... It missed the whole point of art representing society. Social reality didn't really exist there; it just stopped at theory. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1576219

I was shot at for being a Tamil in Sri Lanka, and then, everyone was calling me a Paki in London, and I'm not even Pakistani. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1578809

I'm still working out my opinions - it's always a question mark. I leave loads of space open, and people don't like that. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1608928

My giving birth was nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1626669

There has been an effect of business rap on the output of today's rap music. But I don't think that's the modern day rapper's fault. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1634784

Sri Lanka is an island off the coast of India. There's two ethnicities there; one the Sinhalese, which is the majority and the government, and the minority, who are the Tamils. That's where I'm from. And my lifetime sort of began there; I spent 10 years, and I was there during when the war started and fled as a refugee to England. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1638986

My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1831235

I've documented a lot of things myself as a filmmaker. If you want a rockumentary, that's in there. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1987019

Everyone has that moment where they just rebel. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1843592

I feel like people either love me or hate me, which is good, because that was the point of what I do. The point of M.I.A. is to be - it's either to be loved or hated. At least you evoke that much of a strong opinion about music. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1883494

What's wrong with hip-hop [is that] it became so one-dimensional; it became like a businessman thing. It's run out of creativity. It went so far off about making money that now everyone can do it. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1967211

Here we are at the edge of the world, the very edge of Western civilization, and all of us are so desperate to feel something, anything, that we keep falling into each other and f*****g our way toward the end of days. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1924300

In India, you see the way they embrace color in the culture - it's very celebratory of the existence of color. There's no rule of what color belongs together or doesn't belong together. They're not precious about it. It's very full-on. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1908293

Music that was made in the 60s and 70s did come from a really soulful place. The seed for the songs written in the 90s were planted in those songs, even though they were samples. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 193013

Human beings around the world have to be taught to go, 'Tamil equals Tamil civilians first, and the Tamil Tiger is a separate thing.' And both of those groups are different. It's like a square and a circle. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 570065

You have, in America, you have gang signs. Well, 5,000 years ago, there was thing called a mudra, which is your sitting position when you do yoga or you're meditating or you're praying or whatever. And there's not a lot of them that are named after gods and goddesses, but the middle-finger is specifically named the Matangi mudra. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 420605

The theme of counterfeits, of those that produce and sell them, has always been part of the culture of M.I.A. When I was contacted by Versace, it seemed a great idea to invert the circle. Versace's designs have always been copied; now it's Versace that copies the copies, so those that copy must copy the copies. So this will continue. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 395026

I don't like the idea of spirituality done the way it's done. The only way I could understand it was through creativity, not by going to an Ashram, or finding a guru or joining a temple. I made work out of it. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 376619

I am the bridge between the East and the West. I don't want to abandon one for the other. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 319798

You have to constantly redefine who you are. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 317777

I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of doing that. My music took off above the rest of those things: You can just make a song, put it on a CD, and get it out to all these people. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 317046

Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 272417

Me, it was always about being able to bounce around to where I wanna be. Like, with 'Arular,' people always say it's so political, but I think 50 per cent of the album is not very political at all. It's just really a shouty, shouty girl thing. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 692928

In my head, I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, 'Damn, that's a pop song!' I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 190081

I don't think immigrants are that threatening to society at all. They're just happy they've survived some war somewhere. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 167587

I have no ties to my dad. I had no communications with him; it didn't shape who I am or anything like that. I'm actually a product of my mom. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 151018

I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times, and I just go, 'Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that.' — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 139645

It could be the sort of declining grip of the American MTV-nation culture-the fact that MTV doesn't play so much music anymore. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 137412

The music industry was invented, like, 100 years ago. I'm talking about the goddess Matangi, who invented music 5,000 years ago. She was the only thing that inspired me. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 128865

In 2004, I went onstage for the first time. They put a mike in my hand and pushed me out the door into the crowd. I did the three songs I had recorded and got out. It was the worst day of my life. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 123472

I don't consider myself a musician. I'm an artist. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 119992

Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable? — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 955934

There's a bit of hope that a song can be about anything. If you want to write a song about anything, you can, and you don't have to put it through the process of having it be trendy or cool or generic pop or these types. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1260312

Just make music; don't talk about politics. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 105439

I hate the idea of street art. With music, I just needed my brain and my voice, which didn't cost anything. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1233777

In the beginning [of my career] I definitely felt a responsibility because I was representing a bunch of people [Sri lankans] who never got represented before. I felt this responsibility to correct that situation, to be like, "Look, you can't discriminate against refugees and Muslim people and blah, blah, blah ... " — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1196173

I think people were genuinely addicted to hip hop in the 90s, addicted to the idea of empowerment. I think it came from [the fact that] the rappers in the 90s, their parents coming from the 70s, had such a rich variety of records to sample. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1184989

I don't understand why people make me want to make music that's a join-the-dots thing by numbers. I find it really difficult when people say, 'Aw, you should have made a really big hip hop record, that would have been really good for you' or, 'You should have made a song like Lily Allen, that would have been so great.' — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1109092

The first 10 years of my life, I lived as 'Matangi.' When I came to England in '86, my first week of school was terrible because I would put my hand up to answer things, and no one would choose me because they couldn't say my name. My auntie came from Europe to visit us, and she was like, 'Just call yourself something else.' — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1060200

I feel like I'm living in the dead weeds of hip-hop. I live in the graveyard of what went wrong with hip-hop. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1028659

My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever - the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn't have a bed, and he slept on a table. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 1275675

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 886693

Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission? — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 869279

I was part of the generation that pushed the Internet. In fact, I broke as an artist in the U.S.A. because of the Internet. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 864231

I think when something becomes a comfortable genre, it's against what street art stood for in the beginning - breaking out of genres and taking art out of galleries. Now street art is in the gallery, and it's all made up into a nice, packaged concept. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 837649

I remember taking my demo to every dance person in London. People were like, 'We don't know what this is!' The first people to champion me were a club in Manchester. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 818030

Versace designs have always been bootlegged. Now it's Versace bootlegging the bootleg for the bootleggers to bootleg the bootleg. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 791814

Basically, when I went to school in Sri Lanka from age five onward, the classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 781091

As an artist, you want to play around with mediums and see if you can get the point across in different way. — M.I.A.

M.I.A. Quotes 739655

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did. — M.I.A.