If we forget what used to be, then we’ve lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings.

An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.

I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd.

I'm as much interested in the form-making as well as getting you to think about what we're doing to the world around us.

I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life.

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 saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.