One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

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.