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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. "
Maya Lin
War
View
People
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" 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. "
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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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" 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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" 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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" 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. "
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" For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn. "
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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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" All my work is much more peaceful than I am. "
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" Every memorial in its time has a different goal. "
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" 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. "
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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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" My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions. "
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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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" Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field. "
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" 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. "
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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 very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family. "
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" I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world. "
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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 went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts. "
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" 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. "
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" I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd. "
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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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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it. "
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