Quotes from Boel Westin

Endless peace and a certain desolation – especially in the evenings. It's been stormy nearly all the time and out on the point the house has been thoroughly ventilated. Breakers all round and the weirdest illusory sensation of voices, steps and music in the wind. In particular, the acoustic phenomenon of rhythmic violin music when I want to sleep has been a bit disturbing. You become different and think new thoughts when you live a long time alone with the sea and yourself.

I'm afraid that all my life I shall be an unpolitical = asocial painter, a so-called individualist depicting lemons, writing fairy tales, collecting weird objects as a hobby and detesting associations and societies. It seems rather silly, but that's the way I want my life. And if I fight, it's only so as to find peace,' she wrote in February 1949.

threw Tove right into the midst of the political whirlpool. Both she and Henry Rein barely escaped prosecution for 'insulting the leader of a friendly foreign power',

As a sculptor, Faffan had no choice but to depend almost entirely on prizes, grants and commissions, which made for a highly unreliable income.

Tove was not forced to make a choice between study and work in the spring of

The whole male solidarity and protective pedestal of privileges, their weaknesses, inviolable and fenced in by slogans, their inconsistency and charming disregard for the feelings of others proclaimed with no trace of nuance as they beat a big drum from morning to evening from the safety of their boys' network of connections.