93 Quotes by Edvard Munch

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

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.

The sea – it is as incomprehensible as existence – it is incomprehensible as death – as eternal as longing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.