Maya Lin Quotes

Quotes about:

• I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

  Maya Lin

  Art, Badass, Bad Ass

  72 Copy quote

• Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

  Maya Lin

  Art, Creativity, Writing

  48 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maya Lin

  Life, Positive, Dream

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Pain, Cutting, Loss

  47 Copy quote

• To fly we have to have resistance.

  Maya Lin

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Encouragement

  Maya Ying Lin, Michael Brenson (1998). “Maya Lin”, Elemond-Electa

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  Strong, Art, Integrity

  33 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Thinking, Lost

  "Presidential Medal of Freedom". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 16, 2000.

  26 Copy quote

• If we forget what used to be, then we’ve lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings.

  Maya Lin

  Forget, Sensitive, Used

  26 Copy quote

• If you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn?

  Maya Lin

  Remember, Accuracy, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present

  Maya Lin

  Thinking, Creating, People

  Maya Lin (2016). “Boundaries”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Journey, Space

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  Badass, Bad Ass, Architecture

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Order, Names

  29 Copy quote

• 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. Interest in the land and concern about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the shaping of the earth before man.

  Maya Lin

  Cutting, Men, Land

  Quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 1996

  11 Copy quote

• Our lives are given meaning by our actions-accomplishments made while we are "here" that extend beyond our own time.

  Maya Lin

  Accomplishment, Our Actions, Made

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maya Lin

  Eye, Light, Overcoming

  21 Copy quote

• Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

  Maya Lin

  Might, Next

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maya Lin

  Hurt, Artist, Thinking

  23 Copy quote

• To fly, we must have resistance.

  Maya Lin

  Resistance

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, World, Form

  7 Copy quote

• All my work is much more peaceful than I am.

  Maya Lin

  Love, Peace, Peaceful

  19 Copy quote

• 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, Artist, Views

  20 Copy quote

• I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.

  Maya Lin

  Play, World, Made

  24 Copy quote

• Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.

  Maya Lin

  Creativity, Thinking, Creative

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maya Lin

  Artist, Want, Tiny

  10 Copy quote

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