"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."
"I begin by considering an effect."
"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 very little . . . and at that, I did it with a great deal of difficulty. I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I have torn all of it out of me by pieces. . . and now I cannot do any more, and it does not give me any pleasure."
"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 by intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precicion and inevitability of a mathematical equation."
"We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art."
