Edvard Munch

I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies - the heritage of consumption and insanity.

I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again.

When I painted, I was a master. I felt that I dominated him, who dominated me.

Is it because she took my first kiss that she took the perfume of life from me?

Had I been in possession of the as yet undiscovered little remote telephone which one carries around in one's pocket, you would have long ago received communications from me.

As a member of the vegetarian cult, I say: Convert from Cannibalism! Do not eat your uncles, aunts and little cousins ​​with shiny eyes. Eat instead, like the lamb, the lily, Lily of the Valley and the grass. You are in fact half vegetarian already – Cognac, burgundy wines and champagne are the blood of the grape.

An old wise man's soul has taken up residence in my dog.

My afflictions belong to me and my art - they have become one with me. Without illness and anxiety, I would have been a rudderless ship.

The strange light illuminated all those night-time meetings that took place in every imaginable sort of café; the lips mouthing defiant words, heedless of restraint or consequence, often overbearing and brutal as only Norwegians can be, vast shadows of impotence misery and shabbiness – spirits training for fulfillment, striving in vain to be great, complete, unique.

And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France].. . Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me.. ..my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer.. ..at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it's all over. Why live?

Nothing ceases to exist – there is no example of this in nature.. . There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How foolish to deny the existence of the soul.

I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic. Then people would see!

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

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.

The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.

A picture is just like me; the more you try to understand it, the more it hides from you.

What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart.