Quotes from Tove Jansson

Juuri tällä hetkellä hän halusi tapella kenen kanssa tahansa, vain tapella ja huutaa ja olla vakuuttunut siitä, että kaikki muut olivat väärässä ja että hänen oli annettava niille selkään.

for if you're not afraid how can you be really brave? (Moominpappa)

You can close your mind to things if something is important enough. It works very well. You make yourself very small, shut your eyes tight and say a big word over and over again until you're safe.

The very last house stood all by itself under a dark green wall of fir-trees, and here the wild country really began. Snufkin walked faster and faster straight into the forst. Then the door of the last house opened a chink and a very old voice cried: 'Where are you off to?' 'I don't know,' Snufkin replied. The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.

You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody else too much, I know.

Just think, never to be glad nor disappointed. Never to like anyone and get crossed at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a belly-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink a beer and have a bad conscience... How terrible.

she leaned forward over the table and whispered: 'This calm is unnatural. It means something terrible is going to happen. Dear Gaffsie, believe me, we are so very small and insignificant, and so are our tea cakes and carpets and all those things, you know, and still they're so important, but always they're threatened by mercilessness …

more compact and self-assured. An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.

Toute nature morte, tout paysage, tout n'est qu'autoportrait.

Who's he going to outwit?" Sophia asked. "Relatives." Grandmother said. "Nasty relatives. They tell him what to do without asking him what he wants, and so there's nothing at all he really does want.

Meanwhile the Hemulen was arranging firework set pieces in suitable places. They had Bengal Lights, Blue-Star Rain, Silver Fountains, and Rockets that exploded with stars.

It's funny about love", Sophia said. "The more you love someone, the less he likes you back." "That's very true," Grandmother observed. "And so what do you do?" "You go on loving," said Sophia threateningly. "You love harder and harder.

Han gikk og gikk, men ikke noe hendte, skjønt det var fullt av folk på alle hold. Og knøttet møtte ingen som han kjente, for knøttet var et meget ensomt lite troll, og altfor sky og blyg til å si : Hei! Kan jeg få snakke litt med deg?

?? ?? ???????, ?????? ?? ?????? ?? e ??? ??????.

Mari was hardly listening. A daring thought was taking shape in her mind. She began to anticipate a solitude of her own, peaceful and full of possibility. She felt something close to exhilaration, of a kind that people can permit themselves when they are blessed with love.

The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.

Mari," said Jonna, "sometimes you're really a little too obvious." "Do you think? But once in a while a person just needs to say what doesn't need to be said. Don't you think?

I wish I was more Moomin-minded.

Sophia stood up and shouted, "Say this: say I hate everything that dies slow! Say I hate everything that won't let you help!

We've decided to wake a miss for you because you are nice. We want a booby as roomful as ours." Everybody had seen the Hobgoblin laugh, but nobody believed he could smile. He was so happy that you could see it all over him -- from his hat to his boots! Without a word he waved his cloak over the grass -- and behold! Once more the garden was filled with a pink light and there on the grass before them lay a twin to the King's Ruby -- the Queen's Ruby.

He just wants to be left alone, but he doesn't know it yet.

The arabesques sank into the ground and turned green with moss, and the trees slipped deeper and deeper into each other's arms as time went by.

Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn't even didn't even realize they had forgotten.

A steady land breeze blew through the trees behind the house. The heavy new snow tumbled from spruce branches, first here, then there, filling the whole woods with steps and whispers. Between the tree roots on the sun side, the soil was showing dark and wet with little sprigs of lingon.