Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Maya Lin
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 5
Architect
Designer
Land Artist
Landscape Architect
Printmaker
Sculptor
Athens
Ohio
Maya Ying Lin
Irrelevant
Anything
Vietnam
Happened
Politics
Eclipsed
Read
Veterans
Memorial
War
Veteran
Artist
Deliberately
Felt

More quotes by Maya Lin

Image
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
Image
You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.
Maya Lin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.
Maya Lin
Image
If you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn?
Maya Lin
Image
If we forget what used to be, then we’ve lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings.
Maya Lin
Image
Sometimes I think creativity is magic it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.
Maya Lin
Image
I begin by imagining an artwork verbally. I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do. I need to understand the artwork without giving it a specific materiality or solid form.
Maya Lin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down.
Maya Lin
Image
My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight.
Maya Lin
Image
The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
Maya Lin
Image
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
Maya Lin
Image
Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can't be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.
Maya Lin
Image
Every memorial in its time has a different goal.
Maya Lin
Image
You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.
Maya Lin
Image
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.
Maya Lin