Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.

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

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

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.

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