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

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

Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

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.