I begin by considering an effect.

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.

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!

In quarreling the truth is always lost.

My first college roommate greeted me with a shocked silence followed by, 'So. . .you're black.

Since woman's rights have come up a young woman is better able to fight her own battle.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I've turned up to costume parties in the wrong costume. I've made social faux pas a plenty. I've put one foot in front of the other and fallen over.

Every great move forward in your life begins with a leap of faith, a step into the unknown.

To say that God is love is in effect to say simply that love is God.

It's not about the outside, it's the inside. But dressing on the outside can help the inside.

Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA.

I'm happy with the way everyone presents themselves onstage.