Henri Matisse Seated nude seen from behind poster (1913)

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

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

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

“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.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

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

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

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

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

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”