Quotes by Edvard Munch

“By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does.”

“And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France].. .Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their la...”

“No one in art has yet penetrated as far [as Dostoyevsky into the mystical realms of the soul, towards the metaphysical, the subconsciousness, viewing the external reality of the world as merely a s...”

“My ideas developed under the influence of the bohemians or rather under Hans Jager [leader of the 'Kristiania Bohemia' since 1883]. Many people have mistakenly claimed that my ideas were formed und...”

“One sunny spring day I heard the music coming down Karl Johan [street] and it filled me with joy. The spring, the sun, the music, all blended together to make me shiver with pleasure. The music add...”

“Behind the top hats, a little lady wearing lila-coloured tights was balancing on a tightrope in the middle of all that blue-grey tobacco-laden air. I sauntered in among the standing clientele. I wa...”

“The strange light illuminated all those night-time meetings that took place in every imaginable sort of café; the lips mouthing defiant words, heedless of restraint or consequence, often overbearin...”

“The only influences in [the painting 'The sick Child', Munch painted in his elderly home, remembering very accurate the last days of his dying little sister Sophie] 'The sick Child'.. ..were the on...”

“One evening I came to have a discussion with my father on the subject how long unbelievers are tormented in Hell. I maintained that no sinner could be so guilty that God would let him suffer longer...”

“Could only have been painted by a madman.”

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

“Grey dawn was seeping into the sick room [around Christmas 1867, Munch was almost dying then and spitting blood when he was 13; but he recovered]. I lay in the middle of the bed with my hands outsi...”

“Far out there – that”

“Soft line where the air meets The sea – it is as incomprehensible as existence – it is incomprehensible as death – as eternal as longing.”

“My afflictions belong to me and my art - they have become one with me. Without illness and anxiety, I would have been a rudderless ship.. .My art is really a voluntary confession and an attempt to ...”

“What is art really? The outcome of dissatisfaction with life, the point of impact for the creative force, the continual movement of life.. ..in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to m...”

“Munch's my favorite artist in the whole world. He's gentle, he's emotional, and he's just a really, really fantastic painter. He was spiritual, poetic, very, very handsome. And he worked really hard.”

“The creator of the 'Frieze of Life' was almost blind [in 1938, when Hodin visited Munch]. He had completely lost the sight of one eye a year before through the bursting of a blood vessel that flood...”