"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."
-Maya Lin
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"The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost."
-Maya Lin
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"It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level."
-Maya Lin
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"I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere."
-Maya Lin
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"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 Lin
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"I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher, she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up."
-Maya Lin
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"When we are dealing with death we are constantly being dragged down by the event: Humor diverts our attention and lifts our sagging spirits."
-Allen Klein
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"I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet."
-David Ortiz
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"What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy."
-Mario Puzo
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"So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb."
-Alastair Campbell
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"I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted."
-Fiona Shaw
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"Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death."
-John Thorn
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