Maya Lin Quotes

Our lives are given meaning by our actions-accomplishments made while we are "here" that extend beyond our own time. — 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

For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn. — Maya Lin

I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world. — Maya Lin

I was always making things. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I would be an artist. — Maya Lin

If you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn? — Maya Lin

Every memorial in its time has a different goal. — Maya Lin

I cannot force a design; I do not see this process as being under my conscious control. — Maya Lin

Competitions are what you do as a good exercise. — 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 really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things. — Maya Lin

I'm as much interested in the form-making as well as getting you to think about what we're doing to the world around us. — Maya Lin

Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid. — Maya Lin

War is not just a victory or loss ... People die. — Maya Lin

To fly, we have to have resistance. It's all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion. — Maya Lin

I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd. — Maya Lin

Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles. — 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

My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar. — 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

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost. — Maya Lin

I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. — Maya Lin

The role of art in society differs for every artist. — Maya Lin

The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical. — Maya Lin

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication. — Maya Lin

All my work is much more peaceful than I am. — Maya Lin

If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light. — Maya Lin

To fly we have to have resistance. — Maya Lin

I'm not in a hurry to do a lot of projects. I am very resolved in each project I take on. — Maya Lin

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

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me. — Maya Lin

You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down. — Maya Lin

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family. — Maya Lin

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next. — Maya Lin

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you. — Maya Lin

To fly, we must have resistance. — Maya Lin

If we forget what used to be, then we've lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings. — Maya Lin

My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions. — Maya Lin

You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it. — 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

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. — Maya Lin

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it. — Maya Lin

Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think. — Maya Lin

It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like. — Maya Lin

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have. — Maya Lin

Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field. — 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

I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts. — Maya Lin

I do not think you can find a reason for everything you make. — Maya Lin