Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.'
I'm interested in directing attention and focus, explored through playing cello.
Knowledge and the study of God's Word is voided by the folding of unwilling hands.
For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.
My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
The intense perfumes of the wild herbs as we trod them underfoot made us feel almost drunk.
As soon as we get out of our urban shell, we're still at the mercy of nature as individuals.
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.
There is no substitute for work; what seems ease of performance comes from the greatest labor.
I don't really understand the natural world, I admire it and am a little bit afraid of its power.
I like coming to the United States because the United States played an important role in my life.
There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.
Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity.
I would rather have ideas and some difficulties of technique than a perfect technique and no ideas.
To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.
Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music.
I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
I have the same feeling when I walk in a very beautiful place that I have when I play and it goes right.
It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.
You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.
Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years.
It's wonderful when music is intellectually stimulating. But ultimately it has to be a visceral experience.
Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?
I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature.
I came to Moscow when I was 5 years old from Baku. To walk all night in Moscow will bring back my youth to me.
The truly important things in life - love, beauty, and one's own uniqueness - are constantly being overlooked.
I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.
The earth becomes heaven when you release your fear. The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.
When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.
You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.
The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
People tend to eat through the cello. They tend to take out the things that make it beautifully cello-y sometimes.
When you're touring, it's somehow hard to focus on other things. I know other people can do it, but I really can't.
I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life.
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.
I was always a rebel in the sense that I always wanted to go my own road and do something that nobody else has done.
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.
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.