I begin by considering an effect.
The only love affair I have ever had was with music.
Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.
For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I'm different from him. I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.
Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?
Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!