Top 35 M.I.A. Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.’

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.

Before the Greeks were the Tamils. The Tamils are one of the oldest civilizations that’s still surviving.

Versace designs have always been bootlegged. Now it’s Versace bootlegging the bootleg for the bootleggers to bootleg the bootleg.

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.

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.

I am the bridge between the East and the West. I don’t want to abandon one for the other.

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

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.

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.’

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

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone’s perception of me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I don’t consider myself a musician. I’m an artist.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.’

In New York, everyone’s really neurotic and talks about themselves all the time.

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.