"I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful."

“If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.”

“Sibelius has an acutely developed sense of identification with nature and a preoccupation with myth that at one and the same time define his unique strength and his basic limitation. These preoccupations override his involvement in the human predicament, except in so far as it affects man’s relationship with nature.”

“Sibelius is unquestionably a leader in the front rank of symphonic composers. He has got out of the ruts worn by his predecessors far more completely than Brahms got away from Beethoven, or even Richard Strauss from Wagner. If someone would only burn Finlandia he would come to our young people as an entirely original inventor of a new art form and a new harmony technique.”

“If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.”

“Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.”

“The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it, regardless of the environment and circumstances.”