She always claimed that she could not bestow creativity onto her students and that she could only help them to become intelligent musicians who understood the craft of composition. "I can't provide anyone with inventiveness, nor can I take it away; I can simply provide the liberty to read, to listen, to see, to understand." Only inspiration could make the difference between a well-made piece and an artistic one. She believed that the desire to learn, to become better, was all that was required to achieve – always provided the right amount of work was put in. She would quote the examples of Rameau (who wrote his first opera at fifty), Wojtowicz (who became a concert pianist at thirty-one), and Roussel (who had no professional access to music till he was twenty-five), as counter-arguments to the idea that great artists always develop out of gifted children.