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 w… - Jean Sibelius

Never pay any attention to what critics say…Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!

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.

In his work a means of escape has been found from outmoded romanticism on the one hand and from a barren objectivity on the other.