Maya Lin Quotes

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

In a perfect world, I would be a painter. I love working with my hands. I don't get to do it as much as I like, but I am finding a way to make more time as life goes on because it's a really great outlet for me to express myself.

About 1998, when 'Wide World of Sports' and the 'Footy Show' came to an end for me, I couldn't type. When I started architecture, it was a very aesthetic, creative, an almost art process, where lettering and thick line were how you expressed yourself on the paper.

I don't even think about maintaining a relevance. I just think about what do I want to paint, what am I gonna do now, what am I gonna do later.

Sometimes, trying to make a work of art can be very difficult and very painful.

Art is difficult. It's not always going to please everyone; it's not always going to work the way you want it to work.

You make art, you make it from what you know, and that's the best way to make art. You get lost in the details and make something that feels like it's yours.

The interesting part about being an artist is that the ways in which you express yourself are not always readily available.

When an artist explains what he is doing, he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his work fit in with the explanation.

I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person's eyes alone!

If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art.

It's different if you're a painter. You can hidethe ones that don't work. You can't do that with movies. They tellthe story of who you are at the time, and that's the wonderful thingabout it.

Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something.

As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.

For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

Musicians have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

That's the most important thing in art: to be aware, pay attention, be inspired - but it should come ultimately from you.

I don't tally the world, asking, "Would this annoy you? Would this annoy you?" That's so far removed from where I'm at when I'm in the trenches struggling with how to express things that I don't fully understand myself.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.