Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.

— Maya Lin

I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn't want to go out. American adolescence was a…

— Maya Lin

Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.

— Maya Lin

I cannot force a design; I do not see this process as being under my conscious control.

— Maya Lin

OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think…

— 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…

— 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…

— Maya Lin

Competitions are what you do as a good exercise.

— Maya Lin

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

— Maya Lin

Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.

— Maya Lin

I think I needed to really move past my first public work as memorialist, and be equally balanced. It's a bit unusual,…

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want…

— Maya Lin

I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is…

— Maya Lin

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular…

— Maya Lin

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

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

— Maya Lin

I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal…

— Maya Lin

Every memorial in its time has a different goal.

— Maya Lin

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

— Maya Lin

I do think the smaller-scale studio works have that incredible love of data crunching, whereas I would say the large-scale earthworks tend…

— Maya Lin

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that…

— Maya Lin

Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid.

— Maya Lin