305 Quotes by Tove Jansson

"I know I do everything. I’ve been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I’ve seen and lived as hard as I could, and it’s been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything is gliding away from me, and I don’t remember, and I don’t care, and yet now is right when I need it."

"A person can find anything if he takes the time, that is, if he can afford to look. And while he’s looking, he’s free, and he finds things he never expected."

"There one is safe. In a museum or in a lap or in a tree. Perhaps under the bedclothes. But the best thing of all is to sit high up in a tree, that is if one isn’t still inside one’s Mummy’s tummy."

"The caretaker liked the evenings and the nights. He didn’t need much sleep and often sat by himself in the peace and quiet of the lake shore for hours. He didn’t remember, he didn’t worry, he just was."

"It was the end of August – the time when owls hoot at night and flurries of bats swoop noiselessly over the garden. Moomin Wood was full of glow-worms, and the sea was disturbed. There was expectation and a certain sadness in the air, and the harvest moon came up huge and yellow. Moomintroll had always liked those last weeks of summer most, but he didn’t really know why."

"I want your first trip to be with me. I want to show you cities and landscapes and teach you how to look at things in new ways and how to get along in places you don’t already know inside out. I want to put some life in you..."

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

"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!"

"Clever of you, Hemul. But, on the other hand, think how lonely the Groke is because nobody likes her, and she hates everybody. The Contents is perhaps the only thing she has. Would you now take that away from her too – lonely and rejected in the night?” Sniff became more and more affected and his voice trembled. “Cheated out of her only possession by Thingumy and Bob.” He blew his nose and couldn’t go on."

"And if one doesn’t dare to do something immediately then one never does it."