Quote

I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.

Yo-Yo Ma

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
Remember
Great
World
Fit
Growing
Wish
Understand

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

Image
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Many of the Central Asians know Russian, and Ted Levin speaks it fluently. I speak Chinese, but Mongolian is completely different, so we had to have translators.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music has always been transnational people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music has always been transnational.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I've been traveling all over the world for 25 years, performing, talking to people, studying their cultures and musical instruments, and I always come away with more questions in my head than can be answered.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
One of the marks of a great teacher lies not only in an ability to impart knowledge but also in knowing when to encourage a student to go off on his own.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.
Yo-Yo Ma