"Mais est-ce qu'il ne vient jamais à l'idée de ces gens-là que je peux être 'artificiel' par nature?"
["But doesn't it ever dawn on those people that I may be 'artificial' by nature?"]
  (Ravel in conversation, Calvocoressi, [1933])

"He was something of a dandy, anxious to follow fashion or even to set it. He dressed very carefully and he had a penchant for nice ties, the choice of which was often the subject of endless discussion. This trait, very marked early on, and the constant, meticulous elegance which followed, helped Ravel to create an appearance and to carry the mask he ever used to thwart all invasion of his privacy."
  (Long, [1973], p.118)

"Even when he was wasted by illness, Ravel never appeared unkempt even among his closest friends. All his life he kept the perfect, discriminating taste which led him to match his braces to his blue or pink silk shirts, much to the astonishment of performers whom he would rehearse in his shirtsleeves. ...In Chicago a major concert was delayed for nearly an hour because Ravel refused to appear on the podium without his evening shoes, which were still by mistake in the left-luggage office."
  (Fargue [1949], translated by Nichols, [1987], p.28]

[On Ravel c1898] He wore "favoris [sideburns], with voluminous hair that exaggerated the contrast between his significantly proportioned head and his tiny body. He liked showy ties and frilly shirts."
[Early 1920s] "The years had removed, along with the frilly shirts and the side-whiskers, his small man's haughtiness. His hair, now a mixture of white and black, crowned him with a sort of plumage and while he was talking he would fold his delicate rodent's hands and his gaze would flit over the surface of things like a squirrel's."
  (Colette, [1939], trans. Larner, [1996], p.54, and Nichols, [1987], p.58)

"He was a narcissist. He came to breakfast rouged and perfumed, and he loved the bright satin robes that he wore in the morning. He related all things to his bodily and facial charms. Though short, he was so well-proportioned, with such elegance and such elastic mobility of figure, that he seemed quite beautiful."   [Ravel stayed with Alma Mahler in Vienna for three weeks in October 1920.]
  (Alma Mahler Werfel, [1959], p.147)

"Any number of legends have gathered round him, nonsense like the make-up Alma Mahler claims to have seen on his face... Perhaps one morning, as a tease to provoke her, he did put a touch of rouge on his cheeks, we don't know."
  (Manuel Rosenthal interview France Culture, 1985, quoted in Marnat, [1986], trans. Nichols, [1987], p.33)

"This ambitious dreamer liked to give an initial impression of being occupied with the surface of things and took delight in setting himself up as a dandy. With the most serious air you can imagine he would encourage us to admire his ties and socks and would enter on solemn disputations about their colour.
...He used to keep his thoughts to himself. When occasionally he used to express them, seriousness was soon leavened with mockery. His voice sounded clear and bantering, his eyes sparkled and his curved mouth executed a mischievous smile. But never sarcastic."
  (Tristan Klingsor, in Colette, [1939], trans. Nichols, [1987], pp.13-14)

"From childhood he had a particular liking for minute objects, miniatures, the tiny world of figurines, little things that worked by clockwork, mechanical birds 'whose heart-beats he felt' and miniscule Japanese gardens which evoked for him the giants of the forest."
  (Long, [1973], p.121)