113 Quotes by Maya Lin

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.

Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn’t occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

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.

The only thing that mattered was what you were to do in life, and it wasn’t about money. It was about teaching, or learning.

I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn’t want to go out. American adolescence was a lot wilder than I would have felt comfortable with.

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.

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn’t have that complication.

My grandfather, on my father’s side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.

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.