Maya Lin Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 fly we have to have resistance.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”