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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Yo-Yo Ma

Chemistry

Know

Someone

" 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

Fall

Faith

" 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. "

" I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world. "

" My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture. "

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

" 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. "

" I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Yo-Yo Ma

You

Sound

" 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. "

Yo-Yo Ma

Easy

World

" You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another. "

" When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it. "

" My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries. "

" As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us. "

" Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it. "

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

Yo-Yo Ma

Ahead

Kid

" I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

Yo-Yo Ma

Think

Family

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Sound is ephemeral, fleeting, but some sort of a physical manifestation can help you hold on to it longer in time. I'm sure of this; I've always thought the sound that you make is just the tip of the iceberg, like the person that you see physically is just the tip of the iceberg as well. "

" As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things. "