Quotes from 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.

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.

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.

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

To fly we have to have resistance.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Every memorial in its time has a different goal.