Maurice Ravel Quotations

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

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

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.

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.

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.