View of Notre-Dame, Paris (1914) by Henri Matisse - Poster

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

“Only children know what they are looking for.”