war is not just a victory or loss ... People die. Maya Lin More Quotes by Maya Lin More Quotes From Maya Lin I can't shout out, "Do this." I don't want to be prescriptive. I want to give you facts, and that's the way I've always operated, whether it's a historical fact or a scientific fact, and then you actually have to connect it in your brain. Maya Lin historicalbraingiving I think I've always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me - and this is where some people just don't get it, or they'd prefer it if the work was a lot uglier, a lot louder - I have this personality where I just want to put something out that's a fact and then let you interpret it. It's almost as if you might barely notice it, you might walk right by it, but you have to pay attention. Maya Lin personalitypeoplethinking I think I needed to really move past my first public work as memorialist, and be equally balanced. It's a bit unusual, to be working between the architecture, the art, and what I would say is a synthesis, the memorials - they're problem solving, but it's very symbolic. You get this triangle; I need to be balanced with those three. They're all equally a part of who I am. I love how different they are, and yet they're coming out the same thing, whatever it is. Maya Lin pastartmoving We know under Nebraska there is an underground aquifer that is probably underneath the whole state, but what form does it take? I kind of want to focus on that, for almost political means, because we keep digging more wells. We're not replenishing, and we're having a crisis in water around the world. But how do you visualize it? I don't know, so I know what I want to study. Maya Lin focuswatermean 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 artistfatherfirsts 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. Maya Lin growing-upartistwhite 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 artistteaching Competitions are what you do as a good exercise. Maya Lin good-exercisecompetitionexercise 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 rebellevelsartist I'm not in a hurry to do a lot of projects. I am very resolved in each project I take on. Maya Lin projectsartist For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn. Maya Lin builtarchitectureway 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 artisthomechildren 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 artistnameswar The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost. Maya Lin definitionsartistwar 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 yalekidsschool I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. Maya Lin vietnammemorialcutting 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 memorialartistwar 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 blowteacherschool 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 memorialartistwar When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family. Maya Lin chineseletterslittles
