There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.

Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.