Tove Jansson Quotes

I've never regretted saying no to anything, or finishing something. When I'm in the middle of doing something I love, I can have a better idea, and I'll go, "Oh God, I can't finish this." Maybe I've got some sort of disorder.

When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow some of those first impressions or whether to abandon them.

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

I always come to conclusions very fast. Well, that is one way of thinking, and the other way would be that I lack the necessary perseverance to stick to one thing that really fits me. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing.

If I'm home and I come up with something, I'll try to record it, but a lot of the time I'll forget to. A lot of things go off into space and never come back 'cause I just don't remember them.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

For me, between "Reference" and "Sketching & Conceptualizing" is the "Get the Hell Out of the Studio" step. I most often NEED to shut off the computer, push myself back from my desk and escape the studio space to let possible ideas percolate in my gray matter before committing anything to paper or digital imagery as a sketch or a concept.

When we sit down to work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

None of us know where our stories come from. That's why writers make fun of people who ask us where we get our ideas... because we don't know.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

Usually, the best ideas come from other people's good ideas, which then, after a short gestation period, become your ideas.

Ideas reflect the moment, and so you have to use them. If you store ideas, they wither.

When I'm looking for an idea, I'll do anything--clean the closet, mow the lawn, work in the garden.

I'm the most indecisive person in the world. I'll do three versions of a song, then think, "Is the demo better?"

I've often hesitated in beginning a project because I've thought, 'It'll never turn out to be even remotely like the good idea I have as I start.' I could just 'feel' how good it could be. but I decided that, for the present, I would create the best way I know how and accept the ambiguities.

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It's their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor

I get all my good ideas sort of at one o' clock in the morning, and I tried for a while to behave like normal people.

I tend to [have] a lot of ideas but then just leave them in that infant form and kind of move on.

Who seeks, and will not take, when once 'tis offer'd, Shall never find it more.

I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind.

"Where do you get your ideas?" That's the one question I'm genuinely sick of being asked, and also genuinely fascinated by. What fascinates me is not that people ask the question, but what kind of answer are they really looking for? Because if I tell them the truth, which is "I make them up," they seem very disappointed. They want to know about the trek I do once a year to the mountain.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers in our casual deeds . . . Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today- Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

I've never been able to develop a movie over several years, and keep coming back to it and adding to it. I get excited by the spark of an idea, and if I can't go make that, there's another idea that comes along that I get excited about. It has to happen quickly, in order for it to happen, at all.