Quotes from Edvard Munch

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation. And I would often wake up at night and stare widely into the room: Am I in Hell?

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.

I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

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.

The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography can be taken to Heaven or Hell.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.

My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.

Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder.

Human fates are like planets Like a star that emerges from the dark – and meets another star – shines for a second before disappearing again into the dark – [it is] in this way – in this way a man and a woman meet – glide towards one another are illuminated in love's flames – to then disappear in their separate directions – Only a few meet in a single large blaze – where they both can be fully united

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that ia eternity.

I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

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

ljubav je bozhansko osecanje i svaka nova zaljubljenost obavezno u sebi nosi i senku zhalosti zbog delica sopstvenog ja koje se daruje objektu strasti.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

No creo en el arte que no nace de la necesidad del hombre de abrir su corazón.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

De mi cuerpo en descomposición crecerán flores, yo estaré en ellas, y eso es la eternidad

I should have considered it wrong to have finished the Frieze before the room for its accommodation and the funds for its completion were available.

Some colors reconcile themselves to one another, others just clash.

Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.

The camera will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.