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 Learning
The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost. -Maya Lin War
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 Freedom
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me. -Maya Lin Art
It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level. -Maya Lin War
The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical. -Maya Lin Architecture
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 Architecture
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 Architecture
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 Teacher
Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture. -Maya Lin Architecture
I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. -Maya Lin Architecture
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 Politics
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me. -Maya Lin Architecture
In art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. If you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again, you never finish. I was one of those crazy creatures. -Maya Lin Architecture
I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them. -Maya Lin Architecture
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now. -Maya Lin Home
