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

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.

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

I have a sense of humor, and sometimes it gets me into trouble.

Everywhere that the struggle for national freedom has triumphed, once the authorities agreed, there were military coups d'etat that overthrew their leaders. That is the result time and time again.

The way women today are treated in Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the education our children, boys and girls, receive at school.

Bad things are always going to happen in life; People will eventually hurt you, but you can't use that as an excuse to hurt someone back.

I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.

The crisis is not out there in the world, it is within our own consciousness.

I believe faith is not certainty but the courage to live with uncertainty.

Any book is a self-help guide if you can take something from it.

People are always going to have opinions, and people have a right to their opinions.

If we stay in one place, we will become outdated