Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Tove Jansson on her birthday 🎂
With a Moomintroll doll in Helsinki, 1954
Photo: Lehtikuva
"If I could live it all over again, I'd do it completely differently. But I won't say how."

"It was the utterly hellish war years that made me, an artist, write fairy tales. Flight, catastrophe & homelessness are powerful themes that directly connect the two first stories with reality."
- Tove Jansson

Cool that Tove Jansson (1914) & P. L. Travers (1899) share a birthday today; one born in Finland, the other in Australia. Both writers brought so much joy with their creations.

"The forgotten possibility of life as a gift suddenly becomes thinkable. The fire burns in the stove. One curls up to sleep and recognizes the silence and makes friends with oneself."
- Tove Jansson, "The Island"
theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/1…
📷 Reino Loppinen, 1956

Tove Jansson by Hans Gedda, 1967
"The Moomins are not so much cute as strangely familiar, as though Jansson happened to look in a new direction and find these tender and serious fellow-creatures, who had been with us all along."
- Sheila Heti

Tove Jansson by Reino Loppinen, 1956
A classic picture of the artist in her atelier. Today we're celebrating the birthday of the great artist & writer 🎂

“In Moominhouse they had pancakes for luncheon – big yellow pancakes with raspberry jam. There was porridge from the day before as well, but as nobody wanted it they decided to save it for the next morning”
- Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll