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

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

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

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

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

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.

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.