Quotes by Maya Lin

• 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.
• Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
• Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.
• Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid.
• 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.
• 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.
• Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.
• My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
• The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
• 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.
• To fly we have to have resistance.
• Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.
• My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.
• 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.
• It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.
• 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.
• 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.
• Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.
• We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother.
• 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.
• When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.
• You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down.
• 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.
• You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.
• 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.
• 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.
• I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd.
• 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.
• All my work is much more peaceful than I am.
• 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.
• 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.
• For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.
• 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.
• 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.
• I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
• It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
• 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 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.
• I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts.
• I'm not in a hurry to do a lot of projects. I am very resolved in each project I take on.
• 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 terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.
• 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.
• Embrace the beauty of imperfection, for in these flaws lies true uniqueness.
• As artists, we shape the way the world is seen, felt, and understood.
• Embrace the unknown, for within it lies great opportunity.
• Creativity is the act of tossing your fears a party and letting joy be the DJ.
• Life is the art of drawing without an eraser; create boldly, laugh a lot, and cherish each masterpiece.
• Life is like a mathematics equation; it works out best when you add adventure, subtract haters, divide actions, and multiply chances.
• Be the artist of your own life; if the canvas gets messy, just call it abstract.
• The rooftop views may be impressive, but it's the climb that shapes our character.
• Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected; it's the paintbrush with which we color our world one challenge at a time.
• Success is just a series of tiny flamingops—as in who aced both Talented + Unabridged.’
• Life is like a sunset; it's far more beautiful when you embrace the shadows.
• Success is simply the result of making mistakes vigorously, repackaging them as 'experience,' and hoping no one notices the blemishes.
• Creative minds are like campfires; they’ll light the darkest paths, but if you feed them too little or too much, all you end up with is smoke!
• Creativity is the unexpected twist that turns a routine into a story worth telling.
• Success isn't just measuring what you've gained; it's appreciating what you've learned along the way—especially during the messes!
• Life is like a meter T-shirt—sometimes you just have to peel it off to refresh and embrace the easily ignored!
• Adventure isn't just about exploring new places; it's the journey within ourselves that teaches us vast landscapes of courage.
• Life is like a pancake—if you make a mistake, just flip it over and keep going!
• Sometimes the best plane you can take is to just get on time machine called persistence.
• Life is like tofu; it only tastes good when you season it right!
• Success is like a garden—you must dig deep and accept a little dirt if you want to watch something beautiful grow.
• Life is like a can of soda—without the fizz and excitement, you’re just having a semi-carbonated experience.
• Success is knowing what you love and making the world pay for it.
• Success wears a suit, but don't forget the sneakers—it's a marathon, not a sprint.
• Don't just chisel an idea; sculpt a legend with joyous creativity!
• Creativity is like a playground: it's meant for exploration, and the best results come from diving into the unknown.
• Creativity is seeing a sunset and thinking about the coolest way to paint it.
• Life is like a box of paint; use all the colors and see what masterpiece unfolds.
• Success is like lifting slow; it starts painfully but builds strength over time. So grasp those metaphors, forge your resolve, and crush it!
• Creativity is just as much about knowing what to erase as it is about knowing what to create.
• Life is like trying to juggle open flames—it's beautiful and frightening, but standing in awe is less entertaining than dancing in the chaos.
• Creativity is just as much about having the courage to mess things up as it is about making something beautiful.
• Success is not about how much you have, but how many memorable 'this could be a hilarious story' moments you can gather along the way.
• Success is not about avoiding failures; it's about collecting the right ones to adorn your adventure.
• Success is a journey less traveled, but at least it comes with stunning views and unexpected pit stops.
• Success is not just waking up earlier than everyone else; it's also making that coffee just right!
• Life is a journey; make it worth running late for.
• Life is like origami; sometimes you just have to unfold a few terrible designs before you discover the masterpiece.
• Sometimes the road less traveled is just less traveled because it's filled with potholes—grab a windshield wiper and enjoy the views!
• Start each day as if it were a canvas awaiting your strokes—vibrant colors of hope, splashes of laughter, and earthy tones of persistence. Create your masterpiece.
• Success is a path well-traveled; don’t follow the map, carve your own!
• Life is an elaborate assembly; sometimes you just need a creative glue to hold the pieces together.
• Great leaders aren't afraid to leave their comfort zones because the best views come from the courage to climb.
• Success is not the destination but the fuel that ignites your adventures along the way.