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" 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.' "

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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.' "

" 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? "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Freedom Of Speech

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" You have to constantly redefine who you are. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "