The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.

Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

The whole thing becomes like this evil enchantment from a fairy tale, but you're made to believe the spell can never be broken.

He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.

It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.

Any industry loses its innovation and loses its access to creative juices if you don't have progressive thinking and diversity.

A house o' women is as dead as a house wi' no fire, to my thinkin'. I'm not a spider as likes to corner myself. I like a man about, if he's only something to snap at.

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.

Men who would letterspace lower case would shag sheep.

The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.

There are idiots. Look around.

A question I get asked a lot is 'What is it like to play the straight guy all the time?' And I'm totally okay with it.