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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. Practicing is about quality, not quantity. Some days I practice for hours; other days it will be just a few minutes. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Good things happen when you meet strangers. "

" I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you've got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world. "

" 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. "