Quotes By Maya Lin

All my work is much more peaceful than I am.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every memorial in its time has a different goal.

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.

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.

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To fly we have to have resistance.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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