Top 73 Quotes & Sayings by Frida Kahlo

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.

Mexican - Artist | July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954

Source: Wikipedia

My painting carries with it the message of pain.

Frida Kahlo

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

Frida Kahlo

Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.

Frida Kahlo

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.

Frida Kahlo

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Frida Kahlo

The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes. Aside from that, I like nothing. My head is too small.

Frida Kahlo

I am happy to be alive, as long as I can paint.

Frida Kahlo

I don't know how to write love letters.

Frida Kahlo

I paint my own reality. 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 was a child who went about in a world of colors... My friends, my companions, became women slowly; I became old in instants.

Frida Kahlo

To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.

Frida Kahlo

I love you more than my own skin.

Frida Kahlo

I am my own muse, the subject 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

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

Painting completed my life.

Frida Kahlo

Of the opposite sex, I have the moustache and, in general, the face.

Frida Kahlo

I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls.

Frida Kahlo

I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.

Frida Kahlo

Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?

Frida Kahlo

My toys were those of a boy: skates, bicycles.

Frida Kahlo

I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.

Frida Kahlo

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

Frida Kahlo

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

Frida Kahlo

I am in agreement with everything my father taught me and nothing my mother taught me.

Frida Kahlo

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

Frida Kahlo

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.

Frida Kahlo

To trap one's self-suffering is to risk being devoured from the inside.

Frida Kahlo

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

Frida Kahlo

I had something in my throat. It felt like I had swallowed the whole world.

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

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

Frida Kahlo

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

Frida Kahlo

Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

Frida Kahlo

I don’t like the gringos at all. They are very boring and all have faces like unbaked rolls.

Frida Kahlo

The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to.

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 want a storm to come and flood us into a song that no one wrote.

Frida Kahlo

There is nothing more precious than laughter

Frida Kahlo

I am that clumsy human, always loving, loving, loving. And loving. And never leaving.

Frida Kahlo

Mankind owns its destiny, and its destiny is the earth. We are destroying it until we have no destiny.

Frida Kahlo

It's not possible to present an accurate picture of our culture without all the voices of the people in the culture. So at the emerging level, you can't have a good survey art show without women and artists of color.

Frida Kahlo

I must fight with all my strength so that the little positive things that my health allows me to do might be pointed toward helping the revolution. The only real reason for living.

Frida Kahlo

Everyone's opinions about things change over time. Nothing is constant. Everything changes. And to hold onto some dogged idea forever is a little rigid and maybe naive.

Frida Kahlo

Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.

Frida Kahlo

I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.

Frida Kahlo

I love you more than my own skin and even though you don’t love me the same way, you love me anyways, don’t you? And if you don’t, I’ll always have the hope that you do, and i’m satisfied with that. Love me a little. I adore you.

Frida Kahlo

I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty... love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain.

Frida Kahlo

What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral?

Frida Kahlo

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit.

Frida Kahlo

My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly but patiently. My painting contains in it the message of pain. I think that at least a few people are interested in it. It's not revolutionary. Why keep wishing for it to be belligerent? I can't. Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all of this. I think work is the best.

Frida Kahlo

I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”.

Frida Kahlo

Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.

Frida Kahlo

Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells which are my stars then goes to yours which are my light.

Frida Kahlo

The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody.

Frida Kahlo

Can one invent verbs? I want to tell you one: I sky you, so my wings extend so large to love you without measure.

Frida Kahlo

My blood is a miracle that, from my veins, crosses the air in my heart into yours.

Frida Kahlo

Sexism and racism are parallel problems. You can compare them in some ways, but they're not at all the same. But they're both symptoms inside the white male power structure.

Frida Kahlo

I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.

Frida Kahlo

At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.

Frida Kahlo