3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That’s art to me.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they’ be censored. We were a very insular little family.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
3 December 2020 Maya Lin 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.
