Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

It took me way beyond what I knew, into places of which I was totally scared, but as I became less frightened, I welcomed new ways of thinking and approaching something. It made me an infinitely richer person, and I think a better musician.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

I think it's pretty rare to have the opportunity to work with so many people that I admire in one project.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

He's just so much a master of the material, and that's also based on the deep knowledge of the jazz world, of the American musical theater. By having had such a wide and deep history in all these different musical genres he can pick and choose at any moment what needs to be and it's always organic, it's always him, because all of these worlds are a part of him.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

There is no culture in the world that we have not benefited from.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

He made a score that in some ways is very spare, which fits with the period that is represented in the film, which is actually a unique period in Japanese history because it was a period of transition. Hence, you have all these instruments in transition as well.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives. The Silk Road project hopes to plant the seed of new cultural growth and to celebrate traditions and musical voices everywhere. The Silk Road is far more than a historic trading route that connected the people and traditions of Asia with Europe.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Early on he was thinking somehow in the recesses of his mind that 'Hey, maybe we should do that,' and I know he was interested in the possibility of setting the book to music.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

From the sight-reading abilities of the students who came to the reading sessions, 95 of whom were not music majors, to the great questions and comments we got from students in the classes, to the amazing enthusiasm and energy of the jam session, everywhere we went we could feel the intelligence and open-mindedness of Harvard undergraduates.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Good things happen when you meet strangers.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

I'm not likely to forget where I've been and what I've done and learned. I think it's just as important to play new instruments as to play new pieces. The old ones are getting scarcer and the new ones more and more wonderful.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

I think I actually enjoy practicing now more than seven years ago because you're really doing something totally specific.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

The Silk Road is far more than a historic trading route that connected the people and traditions of Asia with Europe.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Our (nation's) cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.

- Yo-Yo Ma Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes