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.

You should be having more fun in high school, exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning-not worrying about competition.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.

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.

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication.

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.

We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother.