My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya LinRead
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.
Interpretation
The American Dream is about pursuing your true passion and achieving personal freedom.
Maya Lin's quote emphasizes the essence of the American Dream as the opportunity to pursue one's individual calling and personal ambitions. This notion of freedom implies that true happiness and fulfillment come from engaging in work that resonates with one's true self, illustrating the fundamental belief in the power of individual choice and self-determination in achieving a meaningful life.
In practice
In a speech about entrepreneurship, one could say, 'As Maya Lin puts it, the American Dream is about the incredible freedom to follow your personal calling.'
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
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.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
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.
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.
I'm 9, 10, and I'm watching the Apollo astronauts go to the moon. We're sitting on the floor of a school, and they have this... huge TV, and I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking 'Me, I would like to do that.' But it didn't dawn on me then that they were American; I was Canadian. They were men; I was a girl. They were test pilots, military folks.
And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.
I'm not a dreamer, and I'm not saying this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer, but I believe in miracles. I have to.
Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
My dream was to play in the NBA and live my authentic life as a proud gay man at the same time. I was able to accomplish both of those goals because of the people who have supported me throughout my life.
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