Yanni Quotes

If you leave yourself open to learning, then you can benefit and enjoy an incredibly rewarding and insightful experience. These experiences are the driving force in my life, and they keep me alive and inspire not only my music but also my everyday life.

My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.

It’s a cliché - but true - that life is not a dress rehearsal. You get to do it once, so do it well.

Symphonies can generate a tremendous amount of sounds, beauty, and emotion. That is part of their human feel and sweetness. Keyboards, on the other hand, give us access to millions of sounds. When I put the two together, the result is unique, and it’s not only pleasing to the ear, but produces emotional responses that neither of the two can achieve on their own.

In the English language, I can love my car, or my house, or my daughter, or traveling, but in Greek and how I grew up, love is described with different words.

My father once said, ‘If the whole world wants to go left and you feel like going right, go right. You don’t have to follow. You don’t have to make a big deal about which way you’re going. Just go. It’s very easy.’

The most important battle is one to conquer yourself.

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

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

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

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.

The love I have for my daughter is completely unconditional, and it is the most important love in my life.

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.

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.

The studio work that I do allows me to connect with people around the world. You can't perform live for everyone, so having the ability to share my creative vision with others is very important to me as well.

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

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.

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

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.

I realize it's possible in ways both large or small to make a difference in someone's life.

I think that love is very important and exists in many forms for all of us.

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

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

Perhaps one of the most important lessons that I continue to have reinforced is to always have faith and believe in yourself. To never lose sight of who you are and to know yourself.

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

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

Going to the school to meet the visually impaired was special. I thought I was inspiring them. I was thinking what I could possibly say to inspire them. Instead of me inspiring them, I felt they inspired me. They showed me how much courage they have, and how hard these teachers are working for these children. They made me feel like I don’t have any problems in life. It gave me uplift. They made me feel so great.

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

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

Well, besides being entertained, I’d like to move them emotionally. I mean I really want to uplift them. I want to look down at the audience, and this is personal experiences now I’m going to tell you. It’s like you look down at the audience and see people smiling, crying, hugging each other. I want them on their way home to feel empowered like they can do anything.

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.

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

Perhaps the most important contribution to me being centered in the midst of this chaos is my daughter, Krystal Ann. I am very lucky because she works with me and is responsible for many aspects of the business on the marketing side of my career. This allows us to travel together and experience life on the road, seeing the world. Having family with me is very important and grounding.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I have been fortunate to have a career that has allowed me to travel the world and come in contact with many different cultures and people.

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

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

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.

I learned from my parents to do my best to not react to negative emotions. I try to think about what has happened and find the lessons that can be learned from these difficult experiences. I try to deal with these negative emotions right away because, if they stay inside, they can hurt and do a lot of damage. I release them as soon as possible so I can be free.

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

I'm an optimist by choice not by stupidity.