Tove Jansson Quotes

Now you can all have a wish
the Moomin family first!"
Moominmamma hesitated a bit. "Should it be something you can see?" she asked, "or an idea? If you know what I mean, Mr. Hobgoblin?"
"Oh, yes!" said the Hobgoblin. "Things are easier of course, but it will work with an idea too."
"Then I want to wish that Moomintroll will stop missing Snufkin," said Moominmamma.
"Oh, dear!" said Moomintroll going pink, "I didn't know it was so obvious!"
But the Hobgoblin waved his cloak once, and immediately the sadness flew out of Moomintroll's heart. His longing just became an expectancy, and that felt much better.

Well,' said Hodgkins, 'perhaps he really is interested in everything, only he doesn't overdo it. For ourselves there is always one single interest. You want to become. I want to do. My nephew wants to have. But the Joxter just lives.'
'Simply lives,' I said. 'Anybody can do that.'
'Mphm,' Hodgkins said.

How happy he must be, this Hobgoblin," exclaimed Sniff.
"He isn't a bit," replied Snufkin, "and he won't be until he finds the King's Ruby. It's almost as big as the black panther's head, and to look into it is like looking at leaping flames. The Hobgoblin has looked for the King's Ruby on all the planets including Neptune
but he hasn't found it. Just now he has gone off to the moon to search in the craters, but he hasn't much hope of success, because in his heart of hearts the Hobgoblin believes that the King's Ruby lies in the sun, where he can never go because it is too hot.

The Hemulen, moaning piteously, thrust his nose into the sand. "This has gone too far!" he said. "Why can't a poor innocent botanist live his life in peace and quiet?"
"Life is not peaceful," said Snufkin, contentedly.

They retained their wooden souls, and the curve of their backs had the enigmatic shape of growth itself and remained a part of the decaying forest

Moominmamma had got up very early to pack their rucksacks, and was bustling to and fro with wooly stockings and packets of sandwiches, while down by the bridge Moominpappa was getting their raft in order.
"Mamma, dar," said Moomintroll, "we can't possibly take all that with us. Everyone will laugh."
"It's cold in the Lonely Mountains," said Moominmamma, stuffing in an umbrella and a frying pan. "Have you got a compass?"
"Yes," answered Moomintroll, "but couldn't you at least leave out the plates
we can easily eat off rhubarb leaves.

You can't always be friendly. It's impossible, there isn't the time.

It's funny about love, the more you love someone, the less he likes you back.
And so, what do you do?
You go on loving, you love harder and harder.

Oh, dear me!" he lamented. "The raft has floated off and I suppose it's gone down that awful hole by now."
"Well, never mind. We're not on it," said Snufkin gaily. "What's a kettle here or there when you're out looking for a comet!

But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed.
"Well, well!" she said, "it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time."
"I hope so," replied Moominpappa. "Pass me a banana, please dear.

Sometimes it's better to look at things than own them ... owning means anxiety and lots of bags to carry around.

There are empty spaces that must be respected – those often long periods when a person can't see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.

It was the winter of war, in 1939. It felt completely pointless to try to create pictures ... I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with 'Once upon a time.'

Tell them it's a secret. Tell them they don't need to know.

Alexander was in the grip of a passion for perfection. He was not aware of how closely, how perilously, perfectionism and fanaticism are related.

One has to discover everything for oneself. And get over it all alone.

It's strange," Moominmamma thought. "Strange that people can be sad, and even angry because life is too easy. But that's the way it is, I suppose. The only thing to do is to start life afresh.

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.

Even potted plants got to be a responsibility, like everything else you took care of that couldn't make decisions for itself.

One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.

A person can also find solitude with others, though it is more difficult

The Dweller Under the Sink had still not come out to eat but was probably living a secret and important life by himself.

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.

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.

Everything's much too big here,' thought Moominmamma. 'Or perhaps I'm too small.

Whatever are Snorks?"
"Don't you really know what a Snork is?" said Snufkin in amazement. "They must be the same family as you, I should think, because they look the same, except that they aren't often white. They can be any color in the world (like an Easter egg), and they change color when they get upset."
Moomintroll looked quite angry. "Well!" he said. "I've never heard of that branch of the family. A real Moomintroll is always white. Changing color indeed! What an idea!

"Don't you really" title="Tove Jansson Quotes: Whatever are Snorks?"
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The hemulen woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn't know.

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

It'd be awful if the world exploded, it's so wonderfully splendid

It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.

Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it's mine.

But he thought all the strange words were beautiful, and he had never had a book of his own before.

Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.

Strangely enough it was the most timid of them all, Salome the Little Creep, who really liked the Hemulen. She longed to hear him play the horn. But alas! The Hemulen was so big and always in such a hurry that he never noticed her.
No matter how fast she ran he always left her far behind, on his skis, and when she at last overtook the music, it ceased, and the Hemulen began doing something else.
A couple of times Salome the Little Creep tried to explain how much she admired him. But she was far too shy and ceremonious, and the Hemulen never had been a good listener.
So nothing of any consequence was said.

One can't be too dangerous, if they like to eat pancakes. Especially with jam on it.

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.

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 realise that they forgotten.

... "But on an occasion like this we must wait for sunset. Setting out in the right way is just as important as the opening lines in a book: they determine everything." He sat in the sand next to Moominmamma. "Look at the boat," he said. "Look at The Adventure. A boat by night is a wonderful sight. This is the way to start a new life, with a hurricane lamp shining at the top of the mast, and the coastline disappearing behind one as the whole world lies sleeping. Making a journey by night is more wonderful than anything in the world."
"Yes, you're right," replied Moominmamma. "One makes a trip by day, but by night one sets out on a journey.

There was so much to talk about that nothing was said. It was warm sitting there on the steps. Everything seemed to be so right.

I don't want friends who are kind without really liking me and I don't want anybody who is kind just so as not to be unpleasant.

One must use the night.

Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.

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

You sentimentalise them because they're little," she said. "But the format doesn't matter. I have gradually learned that everyone, absolutely everyone of every size, is out to get something. People want things. It comes to them naturally. Of course they get more skilful with age, and they're no longer so disarmingly obvious, but the goal doesn't change. Your children simply haven't had time to learn how it's done. That's what we call innocence.

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.

Irrational terror is so hard to deal with.

Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.

Do you know the difference between the first love and the last? It's this: you always think the first love is the last and the last the first...

Is it true you were born i the eighteen-hundreds?" Sophia yelled through the window.
"What of it?" Grandmother answered, very distinctly.
"What do you know about the eighteen-hundreds?"
"Nothing, and i'm not interested, either," Sophia shouted and ran away.

I can work anywhere," said the Muskrat. "It's all a matter of thinking. I sit and think about how unnecessary everything is."
"Really?" said Moominpappa, much impressed. "Perhaps I might offer you a glass of wine? Against the cold?"
"Wine, I am bound to say, is unnecessary," replied the Muskrat, "but a small drop nevertheless would not be unwelcome.

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 realize that they had forgotten

It's finished. There isn't a stamp, or an error that I haven't collected. Not one. What shall I do now?"
"I think I'm beginning to understand," said Moomintroll slowly. "You aren't a collector anymore, you're only an owner, and that isn't nearly so much fun.

No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else's island when there's no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it's a slap in the face

The star we're looking for isn't so very friendly," said Moomintroll. "Quite the contrary, in fact."
"What did you say?" said Sniff.
Moomintroll went a bit red. "I mean
stars in general," he said, "big and small, friendly and unfriendly, and so on."
"Can they be unfriendly?" asked Snufkin.
"Yes
ones with tails," answered Moomintroll. "Comets."
At last it dawned on Sniff. "You're hiding something from me!" he said accusingly. "That pattern we saw everywhere, and you said it didn't mean anything!"
"You're too small to be told everything," answered Moomintroll.
"Too small!" screamed Sniff. "I must say it's a fine thing to take me on an expedition of discovery and not tell me what I'm supposed to be discovering!

Anyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.'
'I know just what you mean,' said X. 'I know exactly what you're going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.'
'Quite,' said Viktoria. 'There's no need to go into it further. But when people understand one another without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don't you think?

I mean, anyone can let Danger out but the really clever thing is finding somewhere for it to go afterwards.

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

When the kite was finished, it refused to fly and kept slamming into the ground as if it wanted to destroy itself, and finally it threw itself in the march. Sophia put it outside Grandmother's door and went away.

When Mats came in the evenings, they would drink tea in the kitchen while reading their books and talking about them. If Katri came in, they were quiet and waited for her to leave. The back door would close, and Katri would have gone.
"Does your sister read our books?" Anna wanted to know.
"No. She reads literature.

Small animals are a great problem. I wish God had never created small animals, or else that He had made them so they could talk, or else that He'd given them better faces. Space. Take moths. They fly at the lamp and burn themsleves, and then they fly right back again. It can't be instinct, because it isn't the way it works. They just don't understand, so they go right on doing it. Then they lie on their backs and all their legs quiver, and then they're dead. Did you get all that? Does it sound good?"
"Very good," Grandmother said.
Sophia stood up and shouted, "Say this: say I hate everything that dies slow! Say I hate everything that won't let you help! Did you write that?

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.

One ought to have the right to have a secret and to spring it as a surprise. But if you live inside a family you have neither.

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

You're too small to be told everything.

If words lie face down there's a chance they might change during the night; you may suddenly come to see them with a new eye, perhaps with a rapid flash of insight. It is conceivable.

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!

There ought to be a big fuss when people move up in the world.

Is that they come up with so many ideas and then they manage to carry them out and believe so strongly in what they do.

Are you too frightened to go any farther?" asked the silk-monkey, who found all this very easy, having four legs herself.
"I'm never afraid," answered Sniff. "But I think the view is better from here.

Well, things can't get much worse
that's one consolation, the Muskrat groaned. He had hidden himself in a forest of bracken in the bathroom, and had wrapped his head in a handkerchief so that nothing should grow into his ears.

It takes a long time sometimes," she said, "It can take a terrible long time before things sort themselves out.

Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.

Finally Anna picked up the letters again, searched through them, fastened her eyes on Katri, and said, "This is wrong! Here you're not me! If a child is mad at her parents it's no comfort that the parents may be having troubles of their own. That's the wrong comfort! I never would have written that. Parents have to be strong and perfect of the child can't beliece in them. You'll have to fix it."
Katri's reaction was suddenly vehement. "But how can they rely on what's not reliable? For how many years do we fool these children into believing in something they shouldn't believe in? They have to learn early early, or they';; never manage on their own.

Here is the most valuable thing in the whole of Moomin Valley, Groke! Do you know what has grown out of this hat? Raspberry juice and fruit trees, and the most beautiful little self-propelling clouds: the only Hobgoblin's Hat in the world!

Because we're going to stay here a little while and calm down until I've learned your names. Light my pipe, someone!

Sometimes people are very predictable: they want a kitten in June, for example, and come the first of September they want someone to drown their cat. So someone does. But other times, people have dreams and things they want they can keep. Eriksson was the man who fulfilled these dreams. No one knew exactly what he found for himself along the way - probably a lot less than people thought. But he went on doing it anyway, perhaps for the sake of the search.

The voice of the waves was now mixed with strange sounds; laughter, running feet and the clanging of great bells far out to sea. Snufkin lay still and listened. dreaming and remembering his trip round world. Soon I must set out again, he thought. But not yet.

It was simply that she was only fully alive when she devoted herself to her singular ability to draw, and when she drew she was naturally always alone.

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.

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 ...

The main thing in life is to know your own mind.

At the same time they both caught sight of a third curly flourish on a tree-trunk right in front of them, but it was terribly high up, at least three feet above the ground.
"That's it, I'm sure," said Sniff, stretching himself. "I must be taller than I thought!

It looks rather ordinary," said the Snork. "Unless you consider that a top hat is always somewhat extraordinary, of course.

Nothing can be as peaceful and endless as a long winter darkness, going on and on, like living in a tunnel where the dark sometimes deepens into night and sometimes eases to twilight, you're screened from everything, protected, even more alone than usual.

Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water. There were little animals everywhere. They could turn up between the covers of a book, flattened and dead, for the fact is that creeping animals, tattered animals, and dead animals are with us all our lives, from beginning to end. Grandmother tried to discuss this with her, to no avail. Irrational terror is so hard to deal with. [p. 136]

I thought it was another avalanche. This morning it was terrible."
"What was?" asked Sniff.
"The avalanche, of course," answered the Hemulen. "Quite terrible! Rocks the size of houses bouncing about like hail-stones! My best glass jar was broken, and I myself had to move quite quickly to get out of the way."
"I'm afraid we happened to knock a few stones down as we were passing," said Snufkin. "It's so easily done walking on these tracks."
"Do you mean to say it was you who made the avalanche?" said the Hemulen.
"Well
yes
sort of," Snufkin answered.
"I never thought very much of you," said the Hemulen slowly, "and now I think even less.

Grandmother had had to be frugal all her life, and so she had a weakness for extravagance. She watched the basin and the barrels and every crevice in the granite fill with water and overflow. She looked at the mattresses out being aired and the dishes that were washing themselves. She sighed contentedly, and, absorbed in thought, she filled a coffee cup with precious drinking water and poured it over a daisy.

Listen," said the Hemulen. "I was born bald on top and really I get along very well.

The Snork Maiden looked around her. Then she leaned forward and whispered in the Fillyjonk's outstretched ear: "First you must turn seven times around yourself, mumbling a little and stamping your feet. Then you go backward to a well, and turn around, and look down in it. And then, down in the water, you'll see the person you're going to marry!" "And how do you get him up from there?" asked the Fillyjonk excitedly.

Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss. What they don't know - and it cannot be repeated too often - is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn't rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies.

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

Moominmamma scooped up a handful of snow and made a snowball. She threw it clumsily as mothers do, and it plopped to the ground not very far away.
'I'm no good at that,' said Moominmamma with a laugh. 'Even Sorry-oo would have made a better throw.'
'Mother, I love you terribly,' said Moomintroll.

The Muskrat was still lying in his hammock and thinking.
"Good afternoon, Uncle Muskrat!" said Moomintroll. "Do you know that things have begun to happen?"
"Nothing new in any case," said the Muskrat.
"Oh, yes," said Moomintroll. "Completely new. There are people in the forest making secret signs everywhere
threats or warnings or something. When the silk-monkey and I came home a little while ago, somebody had arranged mamma's jam pears in a pattern that looked like a star with a tail.

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.

It's funny about paths and rivers," he mused. "You see them go by, and suddenly you feel upset and want to be somewhere else--wherever the path or the river is going, perhaps.

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.

It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it's a balloon that's bouncing against the ceiling and can't get free.
She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to float. She needed an earthly anchor of meaning and care so she didn't get lost in the confusion.

A contract," Katri went on earnestly. "A contract is really much more remarkable than you might think. It doesn't just bind. I've noticed that for some people it's a relief to live with a contract. It frees them from indecision and confusion, they no longer have to choose. Both sides have agreed to share and assume responsibilities. It is, or ought to be, a deliberate promise where people have at least tried to be fair.

It's a funny thing about bogs. You can fill them with rocks and sand and old logs and make a little fenced-in yard on top with a woodpile and chopping block - but bogs go right on behaving like bogs. Early in the spring they breathe ice and make their own mist, in remembrance of the time when they had black water and their own sedge blossoming untouched.