Henri Matisse Madame Matisse poster (1913)

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“Tears fall in my heart as rain falls on the town.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“Art is born of constraints, lives of struggles, and dies of freedom.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”