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You must have a reason to be in the places to which you go, and you must do only things that you really care about.

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
Places
Care
Reason
Must
Really
Things

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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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.
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I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
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Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
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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.
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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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One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
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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.
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Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.
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My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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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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
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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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With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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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