Maurice Ravel Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

I begin by considering an effect.

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

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

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

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

Tell me that not everything I wrote was bad.

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

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