Edvard Munch Quotations

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

Some colors reconcile themselves to one another, others just clash.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.

The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

Youth must go ahead and prosper. These young painters are all very talented people, but they all paint frescoes.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.

Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

I should have considered it wrong to have finished the Frieze before the room for its accommodation and the funds for its completion were available.

I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head

The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.

It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

We're still hopeful, but we are no longer that confident. The chances of finding the paintings diminish with time and already a lot of time has passed,

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

Photography is an art which touches and grips one's own heart's blood.

Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.

I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us - I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me - and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea - I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding - because the threads could not be severed.

The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography can be taken to Heaven or Hell.

The Academies of Art are nothing but great painting factories - those with talent are fed in at one end, and they come out as mechanical painting machines.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls.

And I would often wake up at night and stare widely into the room: Am I in Hell?

But can they [great works] get rid of the worm that lies gnawing at the roots of my heart? No, never.

Anybody who perceives colors can become a painter. It's simply a question of whether or not one has felt anything and whether one has the courage to recount the things one has felt.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red... I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.

Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being... You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it.

It would be quite amusing to preach a bit to all those people who for many years now have been looking at our paintings and either laughed or shook their heads reproachfully. They do not believe that these impressions, these instant sensations, could contain even the smallest grain of sanity. If a tree is red or blue, or a face is blue or green, they are sure that is insanity.

Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have

Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.

Colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature.

If what you want to paint is the emotive mood in all its strength... then you must not sit and stare at everything and depict it exactly as one sees it.

From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation.

I have been given a unique role to play on this earth: given to me by a life filled with sickness, ill-starred circumstances and my profession as an artist. It is a life that contains nothing that resembles happiness, and moreover does not even desire happiness.

I was walking along a road one evening – on one side lay the city, and below me was the fjord. The sun went down – the clouds were stained red, as if with blood. I felt as though the whole of nature was screaming – it seemed as though I could hear a scream. I painted that picture, painting the clouds like real blood. The colours screamed.

It is better to have a good painting with ten holes than ten bad paintings without any holes.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

My will exceeds my talents.

I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted ... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.

Any number of holier-than-thou honorable realists walk around in the belief that they have accomplished something, simply because they tell you for the hundredth time that a field is green and a red-painted house is painted red.

I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.

My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love.

In my art I have tried to explain to myself life and its meaning. I have also tried to help others to clarify their lives.

A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.

I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

A work of art comes only from inside a human being.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50...I had the strength for new deeds and ideas.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.

The paintings are moods, impressions of the life of the soul, and together they represent one aspect of the battle, between man and woman, that is called love.