Best 64 quotes of Yo-yo Ma on MyQuotes

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

The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing.

The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.

When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.

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.

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

With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.

If you are only worried about not making a mistake then you will communicate nothing