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

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 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!

From kindness comes courage.

There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it's the cause that is usually most vilified.

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts.

Love has nothing to do with another person. Love is Truth. Love is Beauty. Love is Self. To know yourself, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love.

Funk is fun. And it's also a state of mind, ... But it's all the ramifications of that state of mind. Once you've done the best you can, funk it!

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

People have always told me a lot that I remind them of Joyce DeWitt.

Let me tell you something: for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

The source of our love comes from within. No one out there is that source. It makes sense to go to the source.