Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think. "
Maya Lin
You
Teachers
Some
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn. "
Maya Lin
Things
Get
Never
" 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
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Fun
Learning
Love
" Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have. "
Maya Lin
Thought
Warmth
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Teachers
School
She
" 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
Me
" 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
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Buildings
Build
Artist
" 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
" 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
" 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
Up
" I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts. "
Maya Lin
Think
School
Learn
" 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. "
Maya Lin
University
Arts
Playground
" All my work is much more peaceful than I am. "
Maya Lin
Work
Than
I Am
" 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
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Living
Planet
Now
" I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd. "
Maya Lin
Like
Crazy
School
" You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down. "
Maya Lin
You
Me
Deep
" Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles. "
Maya Lin
Puzzles
Love
Me
" Every memorial in its time has a different goal. "
Maya Lin
Time
Memorial
Different
" 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 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
Me
" 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
" 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. "
Maya Lin
Parents
Friends
Dinner
" 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
" 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
" My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar. "
Maya Lin
Father
China
Draft
" 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