Quotes by Edvard Munch

“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 f...”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Life here [in Paris, 1885] is quite different. You hardly ever see a dog on a lead; you come across little wagons being pulled by dogs that are often so small that you can't imagine how on earth th...”

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.”

“The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one's mood.. ..coming in from a...”

“When seen as a whole, art derives from a person's desire to communicate himself to another. I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart...”

“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 ab...”

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nat...”

“Nothing ceases to exist – there is no example of this in nature.. .There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How f...”