Top 150 Tove Jansson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.”

— Tove Jansson

2. “I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.”

— Tove Jansson

3. “I’ll have to calm down a bit. Or else I’ll burst with happiness.”

— Tove Jansson

4. “You can’t ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”

— Tove Jansson

5. “I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they’re the most important.”

— Tove Jansson

6. “Storms probably exist only because after them we can have a sunrise.”

— Tove Jansson

7. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

8. “All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured.”

— Tove Jansson

9. “It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent – lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.”

— Tove Jansson

10. “Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it’s mine.”

— Tove Jansson

11. “A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world, because that’s where people are shown what they could be if they wanted, and what they’d like to be if they dared to and what they really are.”

— Tove Jansson

12. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

13. “It was a particularly good evening to begin a book.”

— Tove Jansson

14. “You can’t always be friendly. It’s impossible, there isn’t the time.”

— Tove Jansson

15. “Someone who eats pancakes and jam can’t be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.”

— Tove Jansson

16. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

17. “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

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

— Tove Jansson

19. “Most of the people are homesick anyway, and a little lonely, and they hide themselves in their hair and are turned into flowers.”

— Tove Jansson

20. “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

21. “Dogs are mute and obedient, but they have watched us and know us and can smell how pitiful we are.”

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

26. “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

27. “One must use the night.”

— Tove Jansson

28. “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

29. “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

30. “Making a journey by night is more wonderful than anything in the world.”

— Tove Jansson

31. “Moomin need not have worried, for the Little My’s of this world are practically indestructible.”

— Tove Jansson

32. “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

33. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

34. “If you’re not afraid, how can you be really brave?”

— Tove Jansson

35. “He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck.”

— Tove Jansson

36. “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.”

— Tove Jansson

37. “The hemulen woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn’t know.”

— Tove Jansson

38. “He didn’t remember, he didn’t worry, he just was.”

— Tove Jansson

39. “They were always doing something. Quietly, without interruption, and with great concentration, they carried on with the hundred-and-one small things that made up their world.”

— Tove Jansson

40. “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

41. “I don’t want to hear about them any more. I could vomit on the Moomintrolls.”

— Tove Jansson

42. “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

43. “I’m not sure I would have ever started to draw, let alone write, if my childhood hadn’t been so happy. It was a mixture of comfort and adventure. An excellent mixture!”

— Tove Jansson

44. “I remember the dog at home, when I was a girl; the one that killed chickens. They tied a dead hen around his neck and he carried it around with him all day until he just lay there unmoving with his eyes shut in a morass of shame. It was cruel. There’s nothing so hideously easy as giving someone a bad conscience.”

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson

47. “I have every respect for your deductions, but you are wrong, completely and absolutely, and without any doubt. – The Muskrat.”

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson

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

— Tove Jansson