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People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'

Yo-Yo Ma

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Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
Mother
Always
Thinking
People
Famous
Thinks
Answer
Answers
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More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
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There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
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When your heart and your mind are engaged, you cannot go wrong.
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As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
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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.
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My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.
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I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
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What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.
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Perfection is not very communicative
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Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward if you go forward, you have to jump together.
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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.
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Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
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The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
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Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
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The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, I want to be just like somebody else. You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.
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I don't always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.
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I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.
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Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
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When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.
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When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
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