My job as a performer is to make something memorable. If I do something nice but forgettable, it needn’t have happened. But if it sinks inside someone else’s brain and then they make connections, that’s something worth doing, because you’re going to intimate places in someone else’s psyche. I spend a lot of time thinking about what is the magical mix that can make the thing I love to do be so wonderful for others.

—Yo-Yo Ma, interviewed by David Mermelstein, 29 July 2010