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.

• Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.
• I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
• Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
• 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.