Henri Matisse Quotes

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illumination the fog that surround

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working.

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

When you're out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Si je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidé par quelqu'un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent.

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

"I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a
painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex." - 1946

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.