M.I.A. Quotes

I've worked as a labourer, driven taxis and school buses, and been a car mechanic - whatever I could do just to get by. But it does mean that I know a little bit about a lot of things.

I come from a simple background, so I couldn't call my father and say, 'Come pay my bills,' so I had to get out there and work.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

Coming from a middle class background, I faced a lot of hardships during my initial years in Mumbai. I did not have much money and had to sing jingles and bhajans to survive. But those years taught me that a singer should be versatile.

I was from a tough neighborhood, and we didn't have a lot of money, but my dad worked hard, and my mom is good at budgeting things. That made me appreciate things.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

Put paying your dues and all that puts so much into being a success. You have an understanding of what it's about, being on your own for three or four years and living day to day on $3, or living in an apartment with no electricity.

There's something quite satisfying, quite reassuring about seeing a man having to survive.

When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

I was selling stuff probably since I could remember, like 6 or 7 years old. I was always out there helping my mom and dad sell watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs, stuff like that. Whatever we could put our hands on. I did it until I was around 17. But I was just doing it because I had to. There was no other option.

America has always fascinated me; it's a country where you can make it from one side to the other with no money, by hook or by crook.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

I always knew that I would have to make it on my own somehow.

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age.

You win any which way you can. You do what you have to do to get by. That's the way it works in any job.

There is something to be said for people who have to work hard, be creative, produce what they have with little - or no - means. Those of us from poor homes have the advantage of thinking for ourselves and of knowing that when times get hard, things could always be worse.

My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house.

We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.

When I was a kid, I had to fight for everything.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.