Yanni Quotes

#1. I've always lived in the moment.

Yanni

#2. The good news is when you open up in Vegas, you have a lot of friends, because they all come over to see your opening night.

Yanni

#3. I love the road, and I love coming in contact with the fans. They talk to me and that's irreplaceable. But when I get tired, I head to the studio and I am in there for a long time.

Yanni

#4. You have to give up some of the old so that you can make room for the new.

Yanni

#5. Maybe we didn't have many possessions, but we never went hungry, were cold, or lacked love.

Yanni

#6. Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism.

Yanni

#7. When it comes down to music, I have no balance. I am 100 percent. It is like full throttle. Five hundred miles an hour.

Yanni

#8. The most important battle is one to conquer yourself.

Yanni

#9. There is no gender to my music. There's no male or female voice, no trite lyrics or poetry. It's much more abstract, so it lives with you longer.

Yanni

#10. All you need is passion. If you have a passion for something, you'll create the talent.

Yanni

#11. I just would use any instrument known to man in any combination as long as it describes an emotion.

Yanni

#12. I don't want problems solved for me. I want the fishing rod, not the fish.

Yanni

#13. Music is like creating an emotional painting. The sounds are the colors.

Yanni

#14. I believe that having an open mind is one of the most important qualities we can possess. Once our minds close, we stop evolving.

Yanni

#15. You accomplish what you want to accomplish. I just don't ever want to hurt anybody doing it.

Yanni

#16. That adage about genius being 5 percent inspiration and 95 perspiration - it's true.

Yanni

#17. When you hear 'Truth of Touch,' I believe you recognize that it is me; however it's not the typical Yanni album.

Yanni

#18. There's a very deep connection among human beings. All we have to do is open our minds to it.

Yanni

#19. The live concerts are everything and I'm very grateful that most of my career, I'm a live artist, I've been doing this. So I've traveled quite a lot, played in - I never stopped playing.

Yanni

#20. Everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone's mind, and if anyone of us is capable of such a thought, then all of us has the same capacity, capability, because we're all the same.

Yanni

#21. It's really strange, but they speak to me - the notes and the chords. So when I hear other people's music, I can feel the composer. Whoever created that, I can see in their soul.

Yanni

#22. I tend to avoid writing music about initial reactions to situations, like frustration or anger. I'd rather wait till I go through the problem, and write about the learning that took place.

Yanni

#23. No matter what happens in life, never lose sight of who you are.

Yanni

#24. Whether a person is spiritual or not, we all seek to get away from the stress, anger, and anxiety of everyday life. Some people drink, do drugs, or do worse to escape, and they hurt themselves in the process. Some people listen to music, mine included, and feel better.

Yanni

#25. Truth is the number one element in whatever you do with music.

Yanni

#26. Creativity is an inherent human quality of the highest order. When we create, we become more than the sum of our parts.

Yanni

#27. I don't really like to explain my songs.

Yanni

#28. I truly believe greatness is in all of us. Don't let anyone talk us out of our truth.

Yanni

#29. Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing.

Yanni

#30. Sometimes the knowledge you've been given in school or by an elder - 'this is just the way it is' - keeps you from accomplishing because it traps you in a box in your mind and limits your freedom to deliver.

Yanni

#31. As I understand life at different levels, I can use music to express what these levels feel like to me. Hopefully the listener can be transported to this understanding by listening to the music.

Yanni

#32. I'd decided to take the risk, and either I'd succeed or else.

Yanni

#33. I'm an optimist by choice not by stupidity.

Yanni

#34. If you are a professional, the speed with which you react to a potential problem separates the men from the boys.

Yanni

#35. You need a mind open to possibility, conditioned to love the creative spirit we all have inside ourselves.

Yanni

#36. My new question was, What do you do when your dreams come true? My answer was: Find new ones.

Yanni

#37. With instrumental music, it is traditionally hard to get exposure.

Yanni

#38. Being an athlete helps me get those grandiose emotions of pleasure and pain that are involved in sports.

Yanni

#39. A simple life is good with me. I don't need a whole lot. For me, a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, barefoot on a beach and I'm happy.

Yanni

#40. The less you want, the richer you are. The more you need in order to be happy, the more miserable you'll be.

Yanni

#41. While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.

Yanni

#42. I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic.

Yanni

#43. The greatest things in life - truth, creativity, imagination, love, kindness, compassion -are already inside us, and they're all free.

Yanni

#44. When I create music, it is a reflection of my soul, my experiences in life and my relationships with other people and cultures. Psychology, and understanding who we are as people in this world, is present in almost every creative thought I have.

Yanni

#45. I really and truly believe that music represents humanity's soul.

Yanni

#46. We're all capable if we have faith and passion.

Yanni

#47. Sometimes we get caught up in our troubles and our problems and we let life slip away, but life is precious, all of life, and one must try to take in as much of it as possible.

Yanni

#48. I believe we're responsible for everything that happens to us.

Yanni

#49. You do good work for a long-enough time, I believed, and you'd get noticed.

Yanni

#50. I know that our world is going through a very difficult time right now, but I will never lose my faith in humanity, and our incredible ability to overcome just about anything.

Yanni

#51. It has never been necessary for me to learn how to read music.

Yanni

#52. My father taught me that one of the most important abilities in life is to be able to take the pain and persevere, and for years this lesson had served me well.

Yanni

#53. Being happy with less is what makes a great human being, not a big house with marble floors, or everyone knowing who you are.

Yanni

#54. A little bit of fear means you are doing something worth doing
you are stretching ... You are going outside your immediate grasp.

Yanni

#55. Of all the forces that are exerted on us over our lifetime, at least for me, love has been the most powerful of all.

Yanni

#56. Focused will is incredible. If you have a dream and you don't give up no matter what obstacles come up, then life's problems will fall away and you will get what you want. It happens. It works.

Yanni

#57. I don't dwell in the past; I don't wallow in old events and emotions. I don't waste time on regret. No use going over and over the details of what already happened.

Yanni

#58. New Age is a very small box. It was a term that was brought in by the music industry to classify music that is neither jazz, classical, pop or rock. They didn't know what to call it or what to do with it. So they threw it all together under this one name.

Yanni

#59. Ever since I left Greece more than two decades ago, it has been my dream to return and perform at the Acropolis. This project took more than a year and a half to plan and accomplish, and I would like to thank my band and crew and the scores of people involved in helping my dream become a reality.

Yanni

#60. I do listen to a lot of music, but I don't listen when I'm writing.

Yanni

#61. I don't like to define my music. To me, music is pure emotion. It's language that can communicate certain emotions and the rhythms cuts across genders, cultures and nationalities. All you need to do is close your eyes and feel those emotions.

Yanni

#62. And going into my studio at night, particularly at night when everybody's asleep, is just a total pleasure for me.

Yanni

#63. My music is based on melody and when I play the piano, it's as if I'm singing with them. When you try to transform that into a vocal, there was very little adjustment.

Yanni

#64. Actually, with 'Truth of Touch' I wasn't even intending on making an album. I was just having fun. I had about a six-month period of down time, and I'm not very good at sitting around. So I kind of started going into the studio and having fun with new core mendin sounds.

Yanni

#65. I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

Yanni

#66. It's like flight, you're flying ... When you're hitting something that's turning you on, you get goose bumps. It's a rush. It's very exciting and that's what I'm hoping to do to the audience.

Yanni