The Sofa (c. 1894–1896) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Poster

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“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.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

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

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

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

“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.”