Tove Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Tove Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
My bag was as light as my happy-go-lucky heart.— Tove Jansson
But I think they aren't as hard to defeat as we once thought. They're not fighters."— Amanda Hocking
"I'm sure that will be real comforting to all the dead people here," Tove said.
We'll always keep our bangles in brown pond water in the future. They're so much more beautiful that way— Tove Jansson
It's finished. There isn't a stamp, or an error that I haven't collected. Not one. What shall I do now?"— Tove Jansson
"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.
Someone who eats pancakes and jam can't be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.— Tove Jansson
But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase.— Tove Jansson
Sniff lay under his blanket and screamed.— Tove Jansson
"Now it's right over us!" said Moominpappa. And at that moment a giant flash of lighting lit up the island, followed by a rending crash.
"That struck something!" said the Snork.
It was really a bit too much. The Hemulen sat holding his head. "Trouble! Always trouble!" he muttered.
The sea had changed. It was dark green now with white-horses, and the rocks shone yellow like phosphorus. Rumbling solemnly the thunder-storm came up from the south. It spread its black sail over the sea; it spread over half the sky and the lightning flashed with an ominous glint.— Tove Jansson
"It's coming right over the island," thought Snufkin with a thrill of joy and excitement. He imagined he was sailing high up over the clouds, and perhaps shooting out to sea on a hissing flash of lightning.
Not one adventure in a whole day," said Sniff, who was taking his turn at steering now the current was slower. "Just grey banks and grey banks, and not even an adventure."— Tove Jansson
"I think it's very adventurous to float down a winding river," said Moomintroll. "You never know what you'll meet round the next corner. You always want adventures, Sniff, and when they come you're so frightened you don't know what to do."
"Well, I'm not a lion," said Sniff reproachfully. "I like small adventures. Just the right size.
I've been collaborating a lot, because I like working that way. It's fun and keeps you moving forward.— Tove Styrke
Fancy that! What fun! Coming all this way just to see me!"— Tove Jansson
"Well
we didn't exactly," began Moomintroll, clambering ashore.
"Never mind!" answered Snufkin. "The main thing is that you're here. You'll stay the night, won't you?"
"We should love to," said Moomintroll. "We haven't seen a soul since we left home, and that was ages ago. Why in the world do you live here in this desert?"
"I'm a tramp, and I live all over the place," answered Snufkin. "I wander about, and when I find a place that I like I put up my tent and play my mouth-organ.
We've decided to wake a miss for you because you are nice. We want a booby as roomful as ours.— Tove Jansson
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.
Once a year the Hattifatteners collect there before setting out again on their endless foraging expedition round the world. They come from all points of the compass, silent and serious with their small, white empty faces, and why they hold this yearly meeting it is difficult to say, as they can neither hear nor speak, and have no object in life but the distant goal of their journey's end. Perhaps they like to have a place where they feel at home and can rest a little and meet friends.— Tove Jansson
My poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.— Tove Ditlevsen
[On her mother:] My relationship with her is close, painful, and skaky, and I always have to keep searching for a sign of love. Everything I do, I do to please her, to make her smile, to ward off her fury. This work is extremely exhausting ...— Tove Ditlevsen
![Tove Sayings By Tove Ditlevsen: [On her mother:] My relationship with her is close, painful, and skaky, and I always](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/tove-sayings-by-tove-ditlevsen-237758.jpg "Tove Sayings By Tove Ditlevsen: [On her mother:] My relationship with her is close, painful, and skaky, and I always")
There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.— Tove Jansson
Well, things can't get much worse— Tove Jansson
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.
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.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
We must go home!", said the Snork.— Tove Jansson
"Not yet!" begged the Snork Maiden. "We haven't had the time to explore the cliff on the other side properly! We haven't even bathed!"
"We can wait a little and see what happens, can't we?" said Moomintroll. "It would be such a pity to go home just when we've discovered this island!"
"But if there's a storm we shan't be able to go at all!" said the Snork, brightly.
"That would be wonderful!" burst out Sniff. "We could stay here for ever and ever."
"Quiet children, I must think," said Moominpappa. He went down to the beach and sniffed the air, turned his head in all directions and wrinkled his forehead.
Oh, Anna Aemelin, the only thing you care about is your own conscience. That's what you cherish. You're a charming little liar.— Tove Jansson
A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge.— Tove Jansson
Both my best and my worst habit is that I'm very impulsive.— Tove Lo
Kill Bill is one of my favorite movies. It has this gritty feeling to it, and it's got a little bit of everything - a little bit of western, a little bit of samurai, and a lot of this very cinematic violence that I personally think is very entertaining.— Tove Styrke
The Hemulen slid down onto the grass completely exhausted.— Tove Jansson
"Oh!" he moaned. "There has never been anything but trouble and danger since I came into the Moomin family.
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— Tove Jansson
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.
He said, "It was burning a hole in my pocket. I had to get rid of it, as quickly as possible. I had to buy the most important think I could think of."— Tove Jansson
And he went out and bought a dreadfully tiny bottle of attar of roses.
I think he did exactly the right thing.
Some people say Uncle Einar is a snob, and I sincerely hope I can develop along the same lines.
He read the classics, the French and the German among others, but primarily the Russian, which enchanted him with their heavy patience.— Tove Jansson
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 ...— Tove Jansson
Whatever are Snorks?"— Tove Jansson
"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!
I took a lot time to do the first album, and I was really happy about that album. I co-wrote the songs and it was a learning process. When I was working on that album I realized, for the first time, that I could write my own songs.— Tove Styrke
Everything that has to do with sex is somehow ... it's the best thing in the world, and it's still the one thing people don't want you to talk about.— Tove Lo
I think there's always a bit of pain in everything that's ecstatic - relationships and love, they always come with pain.— Tove Lo
Christmas always rustled. It rustled every time, mysteriously, with silver and gold paper, tissue paper and a rich abundance of shiny paper, decorating and hiding everything and giving a feeling of reckless extravagance.— Tove Jansson
Moominpappa: "Tell us all that's happening out in the world!"— Tove Jansson
Snufkin: "Fuss and misery."
- from "Moomin and Family Life" comic strip
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 save.— Tove Jansson
The Muskrat was still lying in his hammock and thinking.— Tove Jansson
"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.
On the morning, Daddy and I get up at six o'clock because Christmas trees must be bought in the dark. We walk to the other end of town, as the big harbour is just the right setting for buying a Christmas tree. We spend hours choosing, looking at every branch suspiciously. It's always cold.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
Isn't it fun when one's friends get exactly what suits them?— Tove Jansson
A good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.— Tove Lo
The star we're looking for isn't so very friendly," said Moomintroll. "Quite the contrary, in fact."— Tove Jansson
"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!
I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!— Tove Jansson
She could easily have remarked on the heavy skiing weather, or asked how he could even see the road, or complained about the town not getting its ploughs out— Tove Jansson
anything at all to show interest or pretend to show interest, the way people talk to make things a little more pleasant
but no, not Katri Kling. There she stood squinting through her cigarette smoke, her black hair like a mane shrouding her face as she leaned over the table.
I'm from a fancy, well-raised background. We were very well-behaved and not allowed to swear. It's the kind of place where people hide their problems under the rug and pretend it's all perfect. Eventually, you get sick of that.— Tove Lo
The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.— Tove Jansson
We sat talking on a rock. The air was filled with the tang of sea-weed and of something else that could only have been the ocean smell. I felt so happy that I wasn't even afraid it wouldn't last.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
You can't depend on people who just let things happen— Tove Jansson
It's funny about me,' Sophia said. 'I always feel like such a nice girl whenever there's a storm.'— Tove Jansson
"'You do?' Grandmother said. 'Well, maybe ...' Nice, she thought. No. I'm certainly not nice. The best you could say of me is that I'm interested. [pp. 150-151]
She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured.— Tove Jansson
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.'— Tove Jansson
'Simply lives,' I said. 'Anybody can do that.'
'Mphm,' Hodgkins said.
The promises made by a guilty conscience acknowledge and settle no debts...— Tove Jansson
The first album that I bought was the Nirvana 'MTV Unplugged in New York' album.— Tove Lo
I can't live just being content. I can't have a routine. I can't be settled because then I just get really frustrated.— Tove Lo
I know," she said, "rejection's not easy. But you reject words, whole pages, long impossible stories, and it feels good once it's done. It's no different rejecting pictures, a picture's right to hang on a wall. And most of these have hung here too long; you don't even see them any more. The best stuff you have, you don't see any more. And they kill each other because they're badly hung. Look, here's a thing of mine and here's your drawing, and they clash. We need distance, it's essential. And different periods need distance to set them apart - unless you're just cramming them together for the shock effect! You simply have to feel it ... There should be an element of surprise when people's eyes move across a wall covered with pictures. We don't want to make it too easy for them. Let them catch their breath and look again because they can't help it. Make them think, make them mad, even ... Now we'll give our colleagues here better light. Why did you leave so much space right here?— Tove Jansson
I'm not from a music family at all.— Tove Lo
No one can depict desolation who hasn't inhabited desolation and observed it very closely. Things condemned have a terrible beauty.— Tove Jansson
Alexander was in the grip of a passion for perfection. He was not aware of how closely, how perilously, perfectionism and fanaticism are related.— Tove Jansson
If you say, 'I listen to pop,' you picture this kind of perfect, colorful, polished song. I want to have that, but when you open it, you see this gritty dark - kind of like dancing your tears away. Disguise the sadness in a pop beat.— Tove Lo
There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.— Tove Jansson
In the same way that I'm open when I speak, I'm that open on stage. I feed off the energy of the audience, too, so they're feeling what I'm feeling.— Tove Lo
Pearls' burst out the Snork Maiden excitedly. 'Could ankle rings be made out of pearls?'— Tove Jansson
'I should think they could,' said Moomintoll. 'Ankle-rings, and nose-rings and ear-rings and engagement rings ...
I hadn't known anything else, other than being an artist, and I needed to be a person for a while, really get to know myself without that whole thing [of selling music] surrounding me.— Tove Styrke
It takes a long time sometimes," she said, "It can take a terrible long time before things sort themselves out.— Tove Jansson
My childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn't look like it would last until I was grown up.— Tove Ditlevsen
Is it true you were born i the eighteen-hundreds?" Sophia yelled through the window.— Tove Jansson
"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.
You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.— Tove Jansson
One has to discover everything for oneself. And get over it all alone.— Tove Jansson
I thought 'Twinkies' was just a word for 'cookies,' not a specific thing. They kind of scare me a little bit because they last forever.— Tove Lo
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.— Tove Jansson
The thing that I love about pop music is the simplicity and the directness of it.— Tove Lo
Making a whole is very important. Most people paint things and forget the whole.— Tove Jansson
All the other stars keep to their courses, and go along just like trains on their rails, but comets can go absolutely anywhere; they pop up here and there wherever you least expect them."— Tove Jansson
"Like me," said Snufkin, laughing. "They must be sky-tramps!"
Moomintroll looked disapprovingly at him. "It's nothing to laugh at," he said. "It would be a terrible thing if a comet hit the earth.
At the end of the world there lies a mountain so high it makes you dizzy even to think about it. It is as black as soot, as smooth as silk, terribly steep, and where there should be a bottom, there are only clouds. But high up on the peak stands the Hobgoblin's House, and it looks like this." And Snufkin drew a house in the sand.— Tove Jansson
"Hasn't it got any windows?" asked Sniff.
"No," said Snufkin, "and it hasn't got a door either, because the Hobgoblin always goes home by air riding on a black panther. He goes out every night and collects rubies in his hat."
"What did you say?" asked Sniff, with his eyes popping out of his head. "Rubies! Where does he get them from?"
"The Hobgoblin can change himself into anything he likes," Snufkin answered, "and then he can crawl under the ground and even down onto the sea bed where buried treasure lies.
I've always liked music that has a darker vein to it. I come from such a safe upbringing - very stable, classic family, everything's nice and good - I was always looking for something different.— Tove Lo
Have you tried?" Tove countered, his eyes sparkling.— Amanda Hocking
"Well ... no," I admitted.
"Do it."
"How?"
He shrugged. "Figure it out."
"You're really good at this training thing," I said with a sigh.
The room had lost its morning light, the glow of expectation and potential. The daylight was now gray, and the new day was already used, a little soiled by mistaken thoughts and makeshift undertakings.— Tove Jansson
Will you ... I mean, do you want to get married?" Tove asked. "To me?"— Amanda Hocking
"I, um ... " I didn't know what to say.
"If you don't want to, nothing has to change between us," Tove said hurriedly. "I asked because it sounds like a good idea to me."
"Yeah," I said, and I didn't know what I would say until it was coming out of mouth. "I mean, yes. I do. I will. I would ... I'll marry you."
"Yeah?" Tove smiled hopefully, and I nodded.
"Yes." I swallowed hard and tried to smile back.
"Good." He exhaled and looked back down the hall. "This is good, right?"
"Yeah, I think so," I said, and I did mean that.
"Yeah," he nodded. "I sorta feel like throwing up now, though.
Moomintroll bent down to wake the Snork Maiden up, and then he noticed a terrible thing. Her beautiful fluffy fringe was burnt right off. It must have happened when the Hattifatteners brushed against her. What could he say? How could he comfort her? It was a catastrophe!— Tove Jansson
The Snork Maiden opened her eyes and smiled.
"Do you know," said Moomintroll hastily, "it's most extraordinary, but as time goes on I'm beginning to prefer girls without hair?"
"Really?" she said with a look of surprise. "Why is that?"
"Hair looks so untidy!" replied Moomintroll.
It looks rather ordinary," said the Snork. "Unless you consider that a top hat is always somewhat extraordinary, of course.— Tove Jansson
That wasn't so bad," I said. It wasn't bad at all, really. The nerve-racking buildup had been the worse part.— Amanda Hocking
The Chancellor was sweating like a pig, but this was nothing new. I smiled gratefully at Tove. It had been nice having him at my side. Backup and support were never a bad thing.
"Those little hobgoblins freak me out." Duncan shuddered at the thought of Ludlow. "I don't know how they can live with them."
"I'm sure they think the same thing about you," Finn muttered.
It means a lot to everyone around me that I look good, and I don't think it should have to. I just think I should look the way I do.— Tove Lo
The lamp sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe, a little family circle they all knew and trusted. Outside this circle lay everything that was strange and frightening, and the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.— Tove Jansson
It was definitely finished, and for one moment the sadness of completion overtook the Hemulen.— Tove Jansson
My dear child," said Grandmother impatiently, "every human being has to make his own mistakes." She was very tired, and wanted to get home.— Tove Jansson
I'm always exhausted after a show, even if it's just half an hour.— Tove Lo
Thingumy and Bob sighed contentedly and settled down to contemplate the precious stone. They stared in silent rapture at it.— Tove Jansson
The ruby changed colour all the time. At first it was quite pale, and then suddenly a pink glow would flow over it like sunrise on a snow capped mountain
and then again crimson flames shot out of its heart and it seemed like a great black tulip with stamens on fire.
By and by a change came: I started to muse about the shape of my nose. I put my trivial surroundings aside and mused more and more about myself, and I found this to be a bewitching occupation. I stopped asking and longed instead to speak of my thoughts and feelings. Alas, there was no one besides myself who found me interesting.— Tove Jansson
It'd be awful if the world exploded, it's so wonderfully splendid— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
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.— Tove Jansson
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.
The main thing in life is to know your own mind.— Tove Jansson
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.'— Tove Jansson
Sophia," she said, "this is really not something to argue about. You can see for yourself that life is hard enough without being punished for it afterwards. We get comfort when we die, that's the whole idea— Tove Jansson
I was always drawn to the self-destructive kind of way. I thought there was something beautiful about it; I don't know why.— Tove Lo
This has completely disturbed my peace," he complained. "A philosopher should be protected against the rude happenings of everyday life."— Tove Jansson
"Never mind," said Moominmamma, consolingly. "You'll soon feel better."
"But I do mind," said the Muskrat peevishly. "Never any peace ... " And he mumbled on.
