We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.

I do not ask for my music to be interpreted, but only for it to be played.

I begin by considering an effect.

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?