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.

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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.

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Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.

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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.

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Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.

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I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.

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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.

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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.

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Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.

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Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.

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