Maya Lin quotes

I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.
-- Maya Lin

#Pain #Cutting #Loss

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

#Art #Badass #Bad Ass

A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
-- Maya Lin

#Journey #Artist #Space

To fly we have to have resistance.
-- Maya Lin

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Encouragement

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

#Creativity #Writing #Thinking

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

#Play #World #Made

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

#Love #Peace #Peaceful

We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother.
-- Maya Lin

#Brother #Differentiation #Gender

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

#Might #Next

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

#College #Parent #Want

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

#Fun #School #Worry

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

#Teacher #Thinking #Age

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

#Teacher #School #Blow

I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present
-- Maya Lin

#Thinking #Creating #People

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

#Art #Thinking #Serendipity

Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can't be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.
-- Maya Lin

#Bad Ass #Architecture #Fantastic

I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life.
-- Maya Lin

#Past #Order #Names

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. Interest in the land and concern about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the shaping of the earth before man.
-- Maya Lin

#Cutting #Men #Air

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

#Parent #Chinese #Eras

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

#Teaching

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

#Ideas #Mind #Of My Mind

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

#Artist #Want

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

#War #Definitions #Modern

In art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. If you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again, you never finish. I was one of those crazy creatures.
-- Maya Lin

#Art #Rip #Crazy

I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.
-- Maya Lin

#School #Kids #Class

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

#Art #Fields #Architecture

I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn't want to go out. American adolescence was a lot wilder than I would have felt comfortable with.
-- Maya Lin

#Pregnancy #Parent #Want

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

#War #Artist #Memorial

Even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I don't want to be an architectural firm. I want to remain an artist.
-- Maya Lin

#Artist #Want #Tiny

Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.
-- Maya Lin

#Math #Puzzles

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

#Way #Architecture

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

#Art #Architecture #Tricky

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

#Editing #Goal #Shapes

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.
-- Maya Lin

#Artist #Levels #Rebel

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

#Architecture #Warmth

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

#Artist #Projects

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

#Goal #Memorial #Different

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

#Math #Perfect #Logic

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

#Life #Positive #Dream

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

#War #Artist #Views

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

#Children #Home #Artist

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

#Art #Artist #Would Be

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

#School #Thinking #Artist

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

#Eye #Light #Looks

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

#Artist #Childhood #Fatherhood

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

#Art #Dad #School

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

#Father #Artist #Firsts

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

#Crazy #School #Class

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

#Artist #Fog #Groups

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

#Thinking #Artist #Should

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
-- Maya Lin

#War #Artist #Memorial

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.
-- Maya Lin

#Artist #Architecture #Function

Competitions are what you do as a good exercise.
-- Maya Lin

#Exercise #Competition #Good Exercise

An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.
-- Maya Lin

#Art #Strong #Integrity

war is not just a victory or loss ... People die.
-- Maya Lin

#War #Loss #People

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

#War #Names #Levels

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

#Cutting #Memorial #Vietnam

OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think none of the opposition in that sense hurt me.
-- Maya Lin

#Hurt #Thinking #Black

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.
-- Maya Lin

#Art #Character #Years

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

#Chinese #Littles #Letters

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

#Creativity #Thinking #Creative

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

#Growing Up #White #Littles

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

#Patterns #Resistance #Flight

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

#Remember #Accuracy

I begin by imagining an artwork verbally. I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do. I need to understand the artwork without giving it a specific materiality or solid form.
-- Maya Lin

#Writing #Giving #Trying

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

#Art #Artist #Roles

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

#Thinking #World #Form

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

#Forget #Sensitive #Surroundings

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

#Art #Brain #Matter

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

#Design #Conscious #Force