Astrid Lindgren Quotes

You understand Teacher, don’t you, that when you have a mother who’s an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don’t know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.

There is very little you can beat into a child, but no limit to what you can hug out of it.

I don’t mind dying, I’ll gladly do that, but not right now, I need to clean the house first.

But still, if it’s true, how can it be a lie?

Give the children love, more love and still more love – and the common sense will come by itself.

A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.

What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.

I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.

If I have managed to brighten up even one gloomy childhood – then I’m satisfied.

I have noticed several times that people don’t think I know how to behave even when I’m trying as hard as I can.

At least, not in this country,’ she added after a moment’s thought. ‘In China it’s a little different. Once I saw a Chinaman in Shanghai. His ears were so big he could use them for a raincoat. When it rained, he just crept in under his ears and was warm and snug as could be. Not that the ears had such a rattling good time of it, you understand. If it was specially bad weather, he’d invite friends and acquaintances to pitch camp under his ears too. There they sat, singing their sorrowful songs while it poured down outside.

Then she yelled after the girl, ‘No, we haven’t seen any bald ‘uns all days. But yesterday seventeen of ’em went by. Arm in arm!