The role of art in society differs for every artist.

I do think the smaller-scale studio works have that incredible love of data crunching, whereas I would say the large-scale earthworks tend to be much more stripped-down. With the mappings, as connected as they are to a much more analytical idea, what's a map? And can I make a map about time? I think the first time was Hurricane Sandy, the flood plane; a moment in time, but indelibly marked on any of us who were in the city. Mapping time is something that I'm really interested in.

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.

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 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.

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

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.