Quotes from Yo-Yo Ma

There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

I think all musicians have at one time or another experienced one physical problem or another. I have had tendinitis a couple of times, so I try to be really careful. It takes patience and persistence to overcome injury.

There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.

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.

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.

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.

I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

Music has always been transnational.

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.

Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.

I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.

Good things happen when you meet strangers.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.

You know, you can have someone who's the very best at something, but if there's not that kind of chemistry, collaborating is not going to amount to anything.

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 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.

Good things happen when you meet strangers.

I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests.

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.