The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the retina, but one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour. Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is given them.

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.

After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

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.