Henri Matisse

Creativity takes courage.

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

Nothing can be accomplished without love.

Exactitude is not truth.

I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some kind of a Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.

To arrive is to be in prison.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.