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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.

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
Worst
Knowledge
Voice
Else
Someone
Find
Absorb
Thing
Ultimately
Like
Somebody

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.
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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.
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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 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
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This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
Yo-Yo Ma
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We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.
Yo-Yo Ma
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I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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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Nobody else can make the sound you make.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it.
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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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.
Yo-Yo Ma
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When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
Yo-Yo Ma
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I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Perfection is not very communicative
Yo-Yo Ma
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When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
Yo-Yo Ma