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

"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."

"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 begin by considering an effect."

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

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

"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."

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

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