Frida Kahlo Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Frida Kahlo
Really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself.

Frida Kahlo
People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything

Frida Kahlo
I have never expected anything from my work but the satisfaction I could get from it by the very fact of painting and saying what I couldn't say otherwise.

Frida Kahlo
I was really ugly [circa 8 a 10 years old] and had an admiration complex for Christi [her beautiful sister]. They sent us tot the ous of senora Maria a Campos for instruction... I asked about the mysteries of the Bible, and I think I behaved badly so they sent me to a retreat. It was the usual thing: "to dedicate oneself mor to God".... it was a house where one spent about fifteen days... I asked the priest so many questions about how Christ was born, and was the virgin really a virgin, that they threw me out.

Frida Kahlo
I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.

Frida Kahlo
Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence

Frida Kahlo
The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo
I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good behavior!

Frida Kahlo
I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down... The other accident is Diego.

Frida Kahlo
I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive.

Frida Kahlo
Feet, what do I need them for
If I have wings to fly.

Frida Kahlo
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

Frida Kahlo
I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return.
Last words

Frida Kahlo
It was worthwhile to come here only to see why Europe is rottening, why all this people - good for nothing - are the cause of all the Hitlers and Mussolinis.

Frida Kahlo
One Sunday, Diego came to the house to see my paintings and critiqued all of them in a very clear manner, and he told me all the possibilities he saw in them. Then I painted two or three things, which are around the house, that to me seem very influenced by him [circa 1928]. They are portraits of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kids... In 1929, I joined the Communist Party, I got married to Diego, and I had my first abortion. In that year I painted a portrait of Cristina Moya.... and other drawings that Morillo Safa [her main patron] owns. The unfinished [self-] portrait of my first abortion was my first Surrealist painting ['Frida and the Caesarean', she painted in 1929] but not completely. I have it [at home].

Frida Kahlo
Until always and forever. Now in 1944. After all the hours lived through. The vectors continue in their original direction. Nothing stops them. With no more knowledge than live emotion. With no other wish than to go on until they meet. Slowly. With great unease, but with the certainty that all is guided by the "golden section". There is cellular arrangement. There is movement. There is light. All centers are the same. Folly doesn't exist. We are the same as we were and as we will be. Not counting on idiotic destiny.

Frida Kahlo
I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.

Frida Kahlo
I was fascinated by Papa's studio [he was photographer]. I would help him wash, crop and press photos and afterwards sell them, when we were poor. When I was in Prepa, [following college] they would send me to help my father when he had epileptic attacks. After school I would go to his office, which was downtown, and accompany him everywhere. I would also do my homework there, and he would help me. I remember the fear that Papa's epileptic attacks make me feel. Christina and I would hide under the bed.

Frida Kahlo
A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it was was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning elucidated the earth. Now I live in a painful planet, transparent as ice; but it is as if I had learned everything at once in seconds.

Frida Kahlo
Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a wardrobe, where you were 'sure' of finding shirts.

Frida Kahlo
I returned to school [after the bus accident], but I felt very sore and had little strength. I took my paintings to Diego [Rivera], and he liked them a lot, most of all the self-portrait. But of the rest he told me that I was influenced by Doctor Atl [a Mexican painter and revolutionary] and by Montenegro, and that I should try to paint whatever I wanted without being influenced by anyone else. That impressed me a lot, and I began to paint that I believed in. Then the friendship and almost courtship with Diego began. I would go to see him paint in the afternoon, and afterwards he would take me home by bus or in a Fordcito – a little Ford that he had – and he would kiss me.

Frida Kahlo
.. when I had my imaginary friend I would look out of the small glass panes of the window and fill them with steam. Then, I would draw a little window and go out through it. Opposite our house, there was a milk store that was named Pinzon, and I would travel from the little window through the o in Pinzon, and from there into the center of the earth, where I had my friend, and we would dance and play... I do not remember my friend's house, and she had no name. She was like me in age. She had no face. The truth is, I do not remember if she had a face or not, and she was very lively. I could not describe her.

Frida Kahlo
I'll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn't know sad things now. After all I shouldn't complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can't imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier. If you still in the hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers.

Frida Kahlo
There is a skeleton (or death) that flees terrified in the face of my will to live.

Frida Kahlo