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" 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. "
Maya Lin
War
Studying
Nature
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" I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" The role of art in society differs for every artist. "
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" We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother. "
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" My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar. "
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" You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down. "
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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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" 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. "
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" My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. "
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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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Eye
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" Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next. "
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" 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. "
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