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" 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.

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" You have to constantly redefine who you are. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.

World

" '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. "

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

" 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.

Car

Uncle

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

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

" 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. "

" 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.

Shot

London

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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 feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me. "

M.I.A.

Feel

Mirror

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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.

Time

My Life

" 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. "