M.I.A. Quotes

Confidence takes constant nurturing, like a bed, it must be remade every day.

You have to constantly redefine who you are.

Rage and grief are savage companions, but despair is the final undoing.

Everyone has that moment where they just rebel.

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

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.

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyones perception of me.

Besides, isn't it more exciting when you don't have permission?

Whoever's inside is inside; whoever's out is out.

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.

If right now, culture's so divisive, it just leaves these millions of people like me out.

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.

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

Instead of going to war, we should put the money into arts and culture and let creative people define what Britain is.

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.

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

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.

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.

Even if you're frustrated, how do you express yourself? There's no subculture like back in the day.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.