Quote

When your heart and your mind are engaged, you cannot go wrong.

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
Cannot
Heart
Mind
Engaged
Wrong

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

Image
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
Image
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Music has always been transnational.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.
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
I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
In performance, we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we're communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
Nobody else can make the sound you make.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
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
Image
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
Yo-Yo Ma
Image
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.
Yo-Yo Ma