Tove Jansson Winter Quotes

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.

The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won't find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.

All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets, and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant.

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.

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.

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 safe.

Here in the shadow of the firs lay everything the old house had spat out in the course of its life, everything worn out and unnecessary, everything not to be seen. In the darkening winter evening, this landscape was utterly abandoned, a territory that had no meaning for anyone but him. He found it beautiful.

It's a beautiful thought, to meet a writer only in her books.

One by one, the snowflakes floated down on to his warm snout, and melted. He reached out to grab them so he could admire them for a fleeting moment. He looked towards the sky and watched them drift down towards him, more and more, soft and light as a feather. ‘So that’s how it works,’ thought Moomintroll. ‘And I thought somehow that the snow grew from the ground up!

Yes, I know; it's true that memory has an unfortunate habit of working backwards at night and knowing its way through everything without sparing the slightest detail - bad you were too much of a coward to do something, for instance; but you made a wrong choice, or were tactless or unfeeling or criminally unobservant - but of course no one but you has given a thought for years to these things which to you are calamities, shameful actions and irretrievably stupid statements! Isn't it unfair, when we're endowed with such sharp memories, that they only function in reverse?

It was the first snow-fall since before New Year, and Moomintroll was greatly surprised. One flake after the other landed on his warm snout and melted away. He caught several in his paw to admire them for a fleeting moment, he looked towards the sky and saw them sinking down straight at him, more and more, softer and lighter than bird's down. 'Oh, it's like this,' thought Moomintroll. 'I believed it simply formed on the ground somehow.' The air was milder. There was nothing in sight except falling snow, and Moomintroll was caught by the same kind of excitement he used to feel at times when he was wading out for a swim. He threw off his bath-gown, and himself headlong in to a snowdrift. 'So that's winter too!' he thought. 'You can even like it!

This is Daddy's bathing-house," Moomintroll said. Too-ticky gave him a serious look. "You may be right, and you may be wrong," she said. "In the summer it belonged to a daddy. In winter it belongs to Too-ticky.