My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya LinRead
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creative work often requires periods of rest and mental pause.
Maya Lin suggests that in the creative process, there are moments when the mind must step back and disengage from constant thinking. This pause can lead to rejuvenation and inspire new ideas, reflecting the essential balance between active thought and necessary downtime in any creative endeavor.
Themes
CreativityPauseRestThinkingInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creativity, you can use this quote to emphasize the importance of taking breaks.
More from Maya Lin
All quotes βI try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
Maya LinRead
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 LinRead
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.
Maya LinRead
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.
Maya LinRead
I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.
Maya LinRead
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If we're free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running from it.
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