Yo-Yo Ma quotes - page 2

It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed new ways of thinking and approaching something. It made me an infinitely richer person, and I think a better musician. (Yo-Yo Ma)
As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you've got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Children, in a way, are constant learners. Certainly sponge-like. Absorbing everything without careful analysis, even though, at the same time, they are certainly capable of incredible insights. (Yo-Yo Ma)
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I'm not likely to forget where I've been and what I've done and learned. I think it's just as important to play new instruments as to play new pieces. The old ones are getting scarcer and the new ones more and more wonderful. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music, if thought of as a language, would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Our (nation's) cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
Sound is ephemeral, fleeting, but some sort of a physical manifestation can help you hold on to it longer in time. I'm sure of this; I've always thought the sound that you make is just the tip of the iceberg, like the person that you see physically is just the tip of the iceberg as well. (Yo-Yo Ma)
People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.' View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It talks to itself, and because it does, it figures out that there must be a music garden as part of its existence. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma
The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing. View quote
Yo-Yo Ma