Top Quotes by M.I.A. - QuoteMsg.com

M I A Quotes

M.I.A.

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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.
Collection: Design

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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.
Collection: Dad

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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.
Collection: Attitude

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Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Bed

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Rage and grief are savage companions, but despair is the final undoing.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Grief

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Somebody told me that if you wake up every day and do stuff that's easy, then you're doing the wrong thing. If you wake up every day and do stuff that's really hard and you manage to get through to people, then you're doing the right thing. They might have just fooled me by telling me that, but it worked. I think that's my philosophy.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Philosophy

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Everyone has that moment where they just rebel.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Rebel

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I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyones perception of me.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Mirrors

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Everything I think seems to be controversial, so I feel like I need to just go away for a second and put it all down on paper until the storm passes.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Thinking

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Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?
- M.I.A.
Collection: Fiction

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If right now, culture's so divisive, it just leaves these millions of people like me out.
- M.I.A.
Collection: People

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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.
Collection: Art

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

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Instead of going to war, we should put the money into arts and culture and let creative people define what Britain is.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Art

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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.
Collection: Music

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I get called "ISIS" now. Why don't we have a name-and-shame weapons dealership website? Instead, we're like, "Oh my God, are you really talking about the refugees again, making yourself into a caricature?" And it's like, "Until you stop the person in your country who's making billions of dollars from selling weapons, yeah, I have to talk about refugees." Whatever I say will get twisted or messed with.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Country

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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.
Collection: Weed

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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.
Collection: Fall

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

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Even if you're frustrated, how do you express yourself? There's no subculture like back in the day.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Frustrated

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

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I felt pissed off because I realized that you have to teach people in a clichéd way how to be happy-and happiness has become too one thing in American media. Achieving happiness is not really about having a flat stomach and the best car.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Media

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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. But I did it in the most creative way possible.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Mom

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I dont like the idea of spirituality done the way its 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.
Collection: Creativity

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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.
Collection: Talking

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People say we're similar with Lady Gaga, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Thinking

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With homogenized culture, even if you feel frustrated, you'd have to write a Taylor Swift song to get heard.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Song

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Now, [hip-hop/grime artists] Stormzy, Skepta, or the Section Boyz have to be validated by Drake, Rihanna or Beyoncé. They're rolled into this one urban culture bubble; it's not really to do with, "I'm specifically f - ked off about my country and what's going on in my town." We're very much only showing success to artists who impress American artists, and I'm one of them.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Country

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

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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.
Collection: Song

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Any piece of art, when you're putting it on a certain platform, if the platform becomes a political place, you can manipulate things.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Art

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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.
Collection: Responsibility

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I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"
- M.I.A.
Collection: Writing

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We know that those huge U.S. brands do have political sway.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Political

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I'm not sticking up for white kids - I'm going to have a barrage of hate mail - but it's true. If you're poor, you're really poor.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Hate

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My experience has to be funnelled through a black experience or a white experience, or it doesn't exist, because that's how we're going to deal with the world.
- M.I.A.
Collection: White

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In England right now you're not good enough until you get validated.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Not Good Enough

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I feel so terrible for the kids now. In London, even people in their forties can't afford to buy a house or have kids.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Kids

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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. Right up until then, though, I think, "Of course everybody feels this way. This song's the same as the Greek national anthem."
- M.I.A.
Collection: Song

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If it's just politics that's running music, f - k that. I'm out of here! I can't think of anything more boring.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Running

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I wanted to represent a different decade, and I wanted someone who goes back further than me. I go back the furthest on this thing, I never really noticed that before. I'm going to have to fix that or I'm going to look really old.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Different

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Nowadays, [young musicians] are so quick to be like, "OK, fine, I'll take the cheque, or I'll get the stamp from XYZ, and I'm expanding my brand," rather than thinking, "I'm part of this space over here, and in order for it to grow, you can't have it assimilated by this bigger bubble or corporate brand."
- M.I.A.
Collection: Thinking

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I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I've made.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Eye

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I feel like I can't really have a comment.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Feels

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Culturally, I found myself in a very weird situation: you were the person that had made that journey to the West, and then you were going back to comment on something, and then suddenly you were questioned and told, "You can't touch that now because you're a pop star."
- M.I.A.
Collection: Stars

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Creativity needs time to harness before it goes out, and because that's difficult, memes have become the creative language.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Creativity

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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.
Collection: Art

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Across the world, on your phone, everybody gets the same list of things to read, listen to, and watch.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Phones

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I don't have a community like a black community to belong to [with] a musical platform that's been built for years and years and years, or the film-making culture, and I don't have the white one to belong to.
- M.I.A.
Collection: Years