Quote

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.

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
Individual
War
Lost
Acknowledgement
Artist
Definition
Definitions
Approach
Modern
Lives

More quotes by Maya Lin

Image
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
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
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 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
Image
Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.
Maya Lin
Image
You couldn't put me in a social group setting. I'm probably a terrible anarchist deep down.
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
I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.
Maya Lin
Image
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya Lin
Image
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
Image
To fly, we have to have resistance. It's all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.
Maya Lin
Image
To fly we have to have resistance.
Maya Lin
Image
I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life.
Maya Lin
Image
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
Image
It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.
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
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
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
Image
To fly, we must have resistance.
Maya Lin
Image
I'm as much interested in the form-making as well as getting you to think about what we're doing to the world around us.
Maya Lin