Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world. "
Maya Lin
My Own
Own
Play
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Vietnam War
Politics
Veterans
" I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd. "
Maya Lin
Like
Crazy
School
" To fly we have to have resistance. "
Maya Lin
Fly
Resistance
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Choose
Art
Architecture
" When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family. "
Maya Lin
China
Letters
Little
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Architecture
Character
Art
" The role of art in society differs for every artist. "
Maya Lin
Every
Artist
Art
" Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid. "
Maya Lin
Want
Artists
Necessary
" 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. "
Maya Lin
War
Time
Names
" All my work is much more peaceful than I am. "
Maya Lin
Work
Than
I Am
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Always
Every Day
Me
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Studying
Thought
White
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Space
Anything
Time
" It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it. "
Maya Lin
Live
Funny
You
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Hurt
Think
Young
" It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like. "
Maya Lin
Realize
You
Childhood
" I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. "
Maya Lin
Logic
Architecture
Loved
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Class
School
Person
" Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have. "
Maya Lin
Thought
Warmth
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Want
Architecture
Art
" I'm not in a hurry to do a lot of projects. I am very resolved in each project I take on. "
Maya Lin
Am
Take
Projects
" 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. "
Maya Lin
You
Learning
Only
" Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles. "
Maya Lin
Puzzles
Love
Me
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Brain
Help
You
" 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. "
Maya Lin
War
View
People
" Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next. "
Maya Lin
You
Before
Guaranteed
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Eye
Face
Light
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Off
Better
Us
" It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public. "
Maya Lin
Idea
Terrified
Mine
" For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn. "
Maya Lin
Things
Get
Never