Henri Matisse The Dance poster (1909)

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

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

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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

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