Quotes from Tove Jansson

I am fond of lovely old words like 'locomotive'.

Allting blir svårt när man vill äga saker, bära dem med sig och ha dem. Jag bara tittar på dem och när jag går min väg har jag dem inne i huvudet och kan ha roligare saker för mig än att bära kappsäckar.

What is right and what is wrong is a very sensitive matter.

If you're not afraid, how can you be really brave?

Akkurat nå tenker jeg på nordlys. Man vet ikke om det finnes eller bare synes. Alt er meget usikkert, og det er nettopp det som beroliger meg.

Of course, Moomintrolls don't wear clothes, except sometimes in bed.

People carry their loved ones with them. They are forever present.

du försöker leva riktigt men jag försöker leva rikt, det är som en äng där jag plockar här och där av hjärtans lust men du går rakt igenom och kommer ut på andra sidan med tomma händer därför att du inte har hittat just den blomman du ville ha.

And that night he couldn't sleep, but lay looking out at the light June night which was full of lonely whisperings and rustlings and the pattering of feet. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers.

Life is an isle of sorrow, you live today and die tomorrow!

I, who see the end of the world every day, and still I'm going on putting my clothes, and taking them off again, and eating and washing-uo the dishes and receiving visits, just as if nothing ever happened!

You're an idiot," Snufkin said. "Or still worse, you're a story spoiler.

When they reached the top of the hill they turned and looked down at the valley. Moominhouse was just a blue dot, and the river a narrow ribbon of green: the swing they couldn't see at all. "We've never been such a long way from home before," said Moomintroll, and a little goose-fleshy thrill of excitement came over them at the thought.

Ni vet ju att folk blir osynliga om man skrämmer dom för ofta...

A new door to the Unbelievable, to the Possible, a new day that can always bring you anything if you have no objection to it.

Everyone must imagine his own snakes because no one else's snakes can ever be as awful.

No one can depict desolation who hasn't inhabited desolation and observed it very closely. Things condemned have a terrible beauty.

He read the classics, the French and the German among others, but primarily the Russian, which enchanted him with their heavy patience.

Commonplace things can be fascinating.

The world's asleep,' Moomintroll thought. 'It's only I who am awake and sleepless. It's only I who have to wander and wander, day after day and week upon week, until I too become a snowdrift that no one will even know about.

We'll always keep our bangles in brown pond water in the future. They're so much more beautiful that way

Robes, dresses, frocks. They hung in endless rows, in hundreds, one beside the other all around the room - gleaming brocade, fluffy clouds of tulle and swansdown, flowery silk, night-black velvet with glittering spangles everywhere like small, many-coloured blinker beacons.

Seine Gedanken oder plötzlichen Wünsche flogen wie die Laune des Meeres über das Wasser, mal hierhin, mal dorthin, und er lebte ununterbrochen in einer stillen Spannung.

Explosion is a beautiful word an a very big one. Later I learned others, the kind you can whisper only when you're alone. Inexorable. Ornamentation. Profile. Catastrophic. Electrical. District Nurse. They get bigger and bigger if you say them over and over again. You whisper and whisper and let the word grow untilnothing exists except the word.