Looking for the best and inspirational Frida Kahlo quotes?
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her self-portraits. She actively participated in the Mexican political scene, expressing her views on the Mexican Revolution and giving emotional portrayals of Mexican life. She was also a communist and a feminist. Although she could not attend university, she learned about the arts through her father, and in 1926, she had her first solo exhibition in Mexico.
She Born July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City. At age six, she contracted polio which left her right leg thinner than her left one, and she had to wear a brace until she was eight years old. When Frida was fourteen years old, she attended school but was forced to drop out due to typhoid fever which made it difficult for her to walk or write, so she became an artist instead. In 1929, she traveled to Paris, where she met Diego Rivera, and they married soon after.
At age 18, Kahlo suffered a bus accident which left her disabled for the rest of life. Her spine was broken, and two vertebrae were dislocated. This accident had an immense impact on her art and how people perceived it – people believed that she was only painting herself to reflect the pain that occurred because of this accident when instead it had been an interest of hers since childhood.
Kahlo’s paintings were often dark, with some Mexican traditions carrying over into them from her childhood and the tragedies that she experienced throughout her life, like abandonment by both of her parents. Many of these paintings focus on themes like violence, death, and the oppression of women.
Take a look at her quotes that will help you turn your pain into power and make you stronger.
59 Inspiring Frida Kahlo Quotes
“You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Through the round numbers and the colored nerves the stars are made and the worlds are sounds.”
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”
“There is nothing more precious than laughter.”
“You deserve a lover who wants you disheveled, with everything and all the reasons that wake you up in a haste and the demons that won’t let you sleep.”
“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”
“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 flaws in the same ways I do.”
“Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence.”
“Don’t build a wall around your suffering. It may devour you from the inside.”
“Can verbs be made up? I’ll tell you one. I heaven you, so my wings will open wide to love you boundlessly. I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”
“I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.”
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
“Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells which are my stars then goes to yours which are my light.”
“Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit.”
“I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to return.”
“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
“You are the mirror of the night, the violent flash of lightning, the dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter.”
“What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.”
“I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.”
“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”
“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.”
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
“It is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger.”
“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.”
“I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
“The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes.”
“It is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger…”
“Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.”
“You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you ”
“At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can.”
“I want to be inside your darkest everything.”
“Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”
“There is nothing left everything revolves.”
“You deserve the best, the very best because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.”
“To trap one’s self-suffering is to risk being devoured from the inside.”
“I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.”
“People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibitions have been a failure, because the rich don’t want to buy anything.”
“Why do I need feet when I have wings to fly?”
“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.”
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone because I am the person I know best.”
“Mankind owns its destiny, and its destiny is the earth. We are destroying it until we have no destiny.”
“My painting carries with it the message of pain.”
“You are all the combinations of numbers of life.”
“Don’t build a wall around your own suffering – it may devour you from the inside.”
“I tried to drown my sorrows, but they learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.”
“I am that clumsy human, always loving, loving, loving. And loving. And never leaving.”
“I tried to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned how to swim.”
“I love you more than my own skin.”
“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.”
“To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.”
“I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.”
“Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”
“I was a child who went about in a world of colors… My friends, my companions, became women slowly; I became old in instants.”
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.”
“You deserve a lover who makes you feel safe, who can consume this world whole if he walks hand in hand with you; someone who believes that his embraces are a perfect match with your skin.”
“I am in agreement with everything my father taught me and nothing my mother taught me.”
