My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.

Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!

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

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

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

The only love affair I have ever had was with music.

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