Edvard Munch

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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