Maya Lin

To fly we have to have resistance.

— Maya Lin

I do not think you can find a reason for everything you make.

— Maya Lin

I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd.

— Maya Lin

war is not just a victory or loss ... People die.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

Every memorial in its time has a different goal.

— Maya Lin

All my work is much more peaceful than I am.

— Maya Lin

To fly, we must have resistance.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

I'm not in a hurry to do a lot of projects. I am very resolved in each project I take on.

— Maya Lin

It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally…

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

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…

— Maya Lin

To fly, we have to have resistance. It's all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

I was always making things. Even though art was what I did every day, it didn't even occur to me that I…

— Maya Lin

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the…

— Maya Lin

I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.

— Maya Lin

When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from…

— Maya Lin

I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when…

— Maya Lin

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me…

— Maya Lin

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into…

— Maya Lin

How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I…

— Maya Lin

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to…

— 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

We know under Nebraska there is an underground aquifer that is probably underneath the whole state, but what form does it take?…

— 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

I think I've always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me - and this is…

— 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 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 always give the analogy of the Earth at Night picture, of 7.3 billion of us, right? And everyone says, "Well, that's…

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.

— Maya Lin

Competitions are what you do as a good exercise.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin

For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn.

— Maya Lin

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

— Maya Lin