"I have a lot of mental scars from being brought up Catholic and being sent to Catholic school for 13 years!"

“I feel sometimes constrained by the expectation that the work should be solely political. I try to create a type of work that is at the service of my own set of criteria, which have to do with beauty and a type of utopia that in some ways speaks to the culture I'm located in.”

Source : Interview with M.I.A., www.interviewmagazine.com. November 19, 2008.

“But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.”

“You...you've been here quite a long time, haven't you?" What? Oh...yes. Ever since I married What's-her-name. Uh, Martha. Even before that. Forever. Dashed hopes, and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested. How do you like that for a declension, young man?”

“The work element comes into it as well - how much you train and how much work you put into your craft, in the same way a carpenter would perhaps work under a great teacher, etc.”

“I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.”

Source : Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Moisés Puente (2008). “Conversations with Mies Van Der Rohe”, p.56, Princeton Architectural Press

“We love the Stooges, and young kids today don't watch them. They think it's their dad's comedy. So we thought we could reintroduce them to a new audience.”

“I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life.”

“If there is anything the artist or a true work of art teaches us, it is that variety and complexity really increase the unity, and that to achieve unity within a great variety of complexity is a greater achievement and more satisfying piece of art than to achieve unity with just a few elements, which is relatively easily achieved.”