Quotes by Cellists

If you are only worried about not making a mistake then you will communicate nothing

Throughout my career nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at I feel as bad as I did the very first time.

The artist must forget the audience, forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.Then, the music speaks through the performance,and the performer and the listener will walk togetherwith the soul of the composer, and withGod.

I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.

I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.

What do we teach our children? . . . We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique . . . You may become a Shakespeare a Michelangelo a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.

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.

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..

Knowledge and the study of God's Word is voided by the folding of unwilling hands.

I called up to Mama, "Is this a miracle?" She raised and lowered her shoulders. Her voice drifted down, "Maybe. Or maybe this is just what's supposed to be.

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

What we call miracles is just what's supposed to happen. We either go with it or stand in its way.