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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Maya Lin

Crazy

Start

You

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

" I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Maya Lin

American Dream

Freedom

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

" Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have. "

Maya Lin

Thought

Warmth

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

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

Maya Lin

Crazy

School

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

Maya Lin

Art

Looking

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

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

" 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. "

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

Maya Lin

Any

Never

" 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. "

" 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

" All my work is much more peaceful than I am. "

" 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. "

Maya Lin

Against

Level

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

Maya Lin

Architecture

Art

" 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. "

" It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public. "

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

" 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. "