Henri Matisse

I have always considered drawing not as an exercise of skill but as a means of expressing innermost feelings.

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to answer them.

My models, you see, are not there to be admired, but to be interpreted.

I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture.

I have always felt that the true value of an artist is in his sincerity.

Painting is not for me a matter of reproducing reality, but of transcribing my emotion.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

You can't help getting old, but you can help becoming old.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

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

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

I am against ease. If one leaves the possibilities of getting a pension from the government for painting, to all the people who want to paint, all the Sunday painters will seize a brush. That is impossible. It is necessary that there be a straining.

It is evident that in order to make good artists it is necessary that they not eat too well.

Why should I be like a rag-picker in society?

A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.

My curves are not crazy.

I remember our meeting at the Prado Museum and seeing you copying a large [El] Gréco placed on the right hand side of the room.

I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors that it has cost.