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.

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

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

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.

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

I begin by considering an effect.

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

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

Tell me that not everything I wrote was bad.

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