Maurice Ravel Quotations

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

It is beautiful; it is beautiful after all; I have said nothing; I leave nothing. I have not said what I wanted to say. I have so much more to say.

Another significant influence, other than Chabrier - is from Satie, who had a notable effect on Debussy, on myself, and, to tell the truth, on the majority of modern French composers.

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

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

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

Tell me that not everything I wrote was bad.

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

I begin by considering an effect.