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

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.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

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

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

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

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