M.I.A. Quotes

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I feel like I'm just trying to pave my own lane and just kind of make my own sound.

I think I'm just doing me, my music, my shows, and my stories.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you'd rather be in.

I can't tell you how freeing it is to have my own label. For the first time in my career, I have total control.

I try to find different ways of expressing myself. Without that I will die.

I like to make the music that I really love. You're supposed to make your favorite music that no one else played, and I'd like to just keep it at that and not really change it at all.

I never start anything with a really overt, political, or even exactly artistic mission statement.

In terms of music, I can try anything I want, even something that doesn't work at all, because I'm not putting my career in jeopardy.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

Your limitations create your sound.

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that.

I don't want to be held down by genres so much.

I make the kind of music I like.

It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say, but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda, even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films, something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.

When I write, I don't have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might reach.

Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.

Originally I was not writing songs for myself.

When I'm singing, I'm another person. I can be really free, in the sense that I can do whatever I want.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

My music is my way to rearrange the world according to my own hopes.

I'm not a politician; I'm lucky to be a filmmaker and to be able to express myself through the films I make.