Top 40 Astrid Lindgren Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Don’t let them get you down. Be cheeky. And wild. And wonderful.”

— Astrid Lindgren

2. “Everything great that ever happened in this world happened first in somebody’s imagination.”

— Astrid Lindgren

3. “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.”

— Astrid Lindgren

4. “There is very little you can beat into a child, but no limit to what you can hug out of it.”

— Astrid Lindgren

5. “What the world of tomorrow will be like is greatly dependent on the power of imagination in those who are learning to read today.”

— Astrid Lindgren

6. “A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”

— Astrid Lindgren

7. “I have noticed several times that people don’t think I know how to behave even when I’m trying as hard as I can.”

— Astrid Lindgren

8. “And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.”

— Astrid Lindgren

9. “Give the children love, more love and still more love – and the common sense will come by itself.”

— Astrid Lindgren

10. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top.”

— Astrid Lindgren

11. “But still, if it’s true, how can it be a lie?”

— Astrid Lindgren

12. “If I have brightened up one single sad childhood, then I have at least accomplished something in my life.”

— Astrid Lindgren

13. “I don’t mind dying, I’ll gladly do that, but not right now, I need to clean the house first.”

— Astrid Lindgren

14. “If I have managed to brighten up even one gloomy childhood – then I’m satisfied.”

— Astrid Lindgren

15. “What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.”

— Astrid Lindgren

16. “I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.”

— Astrid Lindgren

17. “You understand Teacher, don’t you, that when you have a mother who’s an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don’t know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.”

— Astrid Lindgren

18. “No Fridolf, bother all this learning. I can’t study anymore because I must climb the mast to see what kind of weather we’re going to have tomorrow.”

— Astrid Lindgren

19. “It’s got to go bang and it has to be fun, otherwise I won’t come!”

— Astrid Lindgren

20. “We were close to him as never before, and this night was the night of our battle. I wondered if they knew, all those who had waited for thousands and thousands of years. I wondered if they knew that this was the night of the battle, and if they thought about me.”

— Astrid Lindgren

21. “I don’t want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read.”

— Astrid Lindgren

22. “But I’m the strongest girl in the world, don’t forget.”

— Astrid Lindgren

23. “I have never experienced being madly in love the way most people seem to have been, although it is not something I would miss. Instead I have had an enormous ability to love my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.”

— Astrid Lindgren

24. “Summer would not last forever; he knew it and Ronia knew it. But now they began to live as if it would, and as far as possible they pushed away all painful thoughts of winter.”

— Astrid Lindgren

25. “The difference between your horse and your monkey? – I don’t know, I’m sure.’ ‘No, it is rather a tricky one,’ said Pippi. ‘But I’ll give you a clue. If you see them both under a tree and then one of them starts to climb it, it’s not the horse.”

— Astrid Lindgren

26. “COTTAGE Behind the gate he saw an overgrown garden and old trees.”

— Astrid Lindgren

27. “Vieni niekai, gyvenime visaip atsitinka...”

— Astrid Lindgren

28. “But I can’t kill anyone,′ said Jonathan, ‘you know that Orvar!’ ‘Not even if it means your life?’ asked Orvar. ‘No, not even then,’ said Jonathan. Orvar couldn’t understand this and Mattias hardly could, either. ‘If everyone were like you,’ said Orvar, ‘then evil would rule for all eternity!’ But then I said that if everyone were like Jonathan, then there would be no evil.”

— Astrid Lindgren

29. “I don’t much like to do housework, you know.”

— Astrid Lindgren

30. “Well, well, so you aren’t going to be a maidservant this time?” said Pippi, stroking his back. “Oh, that was a lie, that’s true,” she continued. “But still, if it’s true, how can it be a lie?” she argued. “You wait and see, it’s going to turn out he was a maidservant in Arabie after all, and if that’s the case, I know who’s making the meatballs at our house hereafter!”

— Astrid Lindgren

31. “Then she yelled after the girl, ‘No, we haven’t seen any bald ‘uns all days. But yesterday seventeen of ’em went by. Arm in arm!”

— Astrid Lindgren

32. “I want to teach the horse to ski, but I’m blowed if I know whether he will need four skis, or only two.”

— Astrid Lindgren

33. “Then he turned to the Master Rose Gardener and said something even more peculiar, “I enjoy the birds singing. I enjoy the music of the silver poplars.”

— Astrid Lindgren

34. “Pippi stroking his back. ‘Bosh, that was a true fib,’ she added. ‘But if it was true, how could it be a fib? Perhaps when all’s said and done, he really has been a butler in Sourabaya, after all! Well, if that’s so, I know who’s going.”

— Astrid Lindgren

35. “Yes, she was lonely, but she missed no one in particular. Whom could she miss? Her days were full of life and pleasure, but they passed so quickly.”

— Astrid Lindgren

36. “I’m going to bed now, Lovis! Not to sleep. But to think and to curse, and woe better anyone who disturbs me!”

— Astrid Lindgren

37. “Instead, I ask you with all my heart, come back to Matt’s fort with us now! It’s not because I like you – don’t think that, whatever you do! But, my daughter does – I know that now – and perhaps I can learn too.”

— Astrid Lindgren

38. “As we were walking along, Britta took her book out of her schoolbag and smelled it. She let all of us smell it. New books smell so good you can tell how much fun it’s going to be to read them.”

— Astrid Lindgren

39. “If you are very strong, you also have to be very kind.”

— Astrid Lindgren

40. “Ronia felt no joy, and she wondered glumly if things could ever be as they had been before.”

— Astrid Lindgren

41. “Se on vain maallista. – Katto-Kassinen.”

— Astrid Lindgren

42. “Maar opeens kwam de zon te voorschijn en de nevels trokken op. De vogels in het bos begonnen te zingen en alles wat treurig en naar was verdween als bij toverslag, en het gevaarlijke leek niet zo gevaarlijk meer. Ik werd weer warm. De zonnestralen gaven al warmte. Het was allemaal veel minder erg, ja bijna goed.”

— Astrid Lindgren

43. “Oh! War broke out today. Nobody could believe it... God help our poor planet in the grip of this madness!”

— Astrid Lindgren

44. “Didn’t I say that wherever you went I was going too?” I asked. “Yes, that’s what you said,” said Jonathan, sounding quite pleased. “Because I want to be with you,” I said, “even in a bottomless pit in the underworld.”

— Astrid Lindgren