I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

Then I saw her smile so close to my eye that there was nothing to see but the smile and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before. Who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at once

The proper word for me," Robin Goodman says, "is me.

Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.

All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.

Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase.

The whole point is, we can forget. It’s important that we forget some things. Otherwise we’d go round the world carrying a hodload of stuff we just don’t need.