Yo-Yo Ma
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It talks to itself, and because it does, it figures out that there must be a music garden as part of its existence.
As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
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.
When your heart and your mind are engaged, you cannot go wrong.Collection: Heart
Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.Collection: Children
Nobody else can make the sound you make.Collection: Sound
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.Collection: Voice
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.Collection: Views
Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.Collection: Moving
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.Collection: Heart
Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.Collection: Way
Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.Collection: Way
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.Collection: Music
I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Life
A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.Collection: Order
Perfection is not very communicativeCollection: Perfection
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.Collection: Together
I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.Collection: Being In Love
Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.Collection: Strength
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.Collection: People
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.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Care
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.Collection: Our World
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.Collection: Curves
Music has always been transnational.Collection: Creativity
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.Collection: Mentor
Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks.Collection: Creative