Maya Lin quotes

To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom. (Maya Lin)
The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
Maya Lin
To fly we have to have resistance.
Maya Lin
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
Maya Lin
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
Maya Lin
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
Maya Lin
We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother.
Maya Lin
For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn.
Maya Lin
My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.
Maya Lin
It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.
Maya Lin
It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level. (Maya Lin)
Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.
Maya Lin
The role of art in society differs for every artist.
Maya Lin
My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight.
Maya Lin
I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.
Maya Lin
All my work is much more peaceful than I am.
Maya Lin
You should be having more fun in high school, exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning-not worrying about competition.
Maya Lin
The only thing that mattered was what you were to do in life, and it wasn't about money. It was about teaching, or learning.
Maya Lin
You have to have conviction and completely question everything and anything you do. No matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, the side of your brain that has the smarts won't necessarily help you in making art.
Maya Lin
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Maya Lin
Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture. (Maya Lin)
I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher, she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.
Maya Lin
Every memorial in its time has a different goal.
Maya Lin
I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.
Maya Lin
I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd.
Maya Lin