Kahlo Quotes & Sayings

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

I think that's such an important message, especially for younger women, to know, 'I don't have to come out of the womb painting like Frida Kahlo. My very first thing that I make isn't going to be an around-the-world sensation.' You have to paint a hundred really ugly, barfy, diarrhea paintings before you come up with that one where you start to really get into your groove. — Kathleen Hanna

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

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

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

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

High society here turns me off and I feel a bit of rage against all these rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, that is what has most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger ... Although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They live as if in an enormous chicken coop that is dirty and uncomfortable. The houses look like bread ovens and all the comfort that they talk about is a myth. — Frida Kahlo

What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral? — Frida Kahlo

I hope the exit is joyful and i hope never to return. — Frida Kahlo

I don't give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am ... You are a shit. — 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

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

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

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

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 this. I think work is the best. (Frida Kahlo, p. 157) — Martha Zamora

Having a child doesn't make a woman a mother any more than owning a paintbrush makes her Frida Kahlo. — Koren Zailckas

The last time I had a dick in my mouth I was dying
alfalfa withered in rows unable to separate desire

from pain There are poets for whom this throbbing
is healing My Frida rail-impaled my
chingona fighting for whole even after gangrene
She loved her body though it betrayed — Jennifer Givhan

They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love? — Kate Braverman

It's important not to insist that people try things against their will. The palate is for pleasure, not for obligations. — F. G. Haghenbeck

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

Auxochrome - Chromophore. Diego. She who wears the color. He who sees the color. Since the year 1922. 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

The industrial part of Detroit is really the most interesting side, otherwise it's like the rest of the United States, ugly and stupid. — Frida Kahlo

I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind. — Frida Kahlo

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

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

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

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

They sit for hours in the "cafes" warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about "culture" "art" "revolution" and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsenses and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. — Frida Kahlo

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

Perhaps it is expected that I should lament about how I have suffered living with a man like Diego. But I do not think that the banks of a river suffer because they let the river flow, nor does the earth suffer because of the rains, nor does the atom suffer for letting its energy escape. To my way of thinking, everything has its natural compensation. — Frida Kahlo

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

I paint flowers so they will not die. — Frida Kahlo

To feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed toward ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward ourselves — 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

One of the things that helps me tell a story through music is to create a character. I have to have a muse, whether it's Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, Marlene Dietrich, or Pippi Longstocking. — Madonna Ciccone

No moon, sun, diamond, hands - fingertip, dot, ray, gauze, sea. pine green, pink glass, eye, mine, eraser, mud, mother, I am coming. — Frida Kahlo

The significant element that is common to Rivera, Siqueros, Picasso, Pollock, Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo is the expression of pain. — Billy Cannon

I don't know how to write love letters. — Frida Kahlo

feet, what do i need you for if i have wings to fly? — Frida Kahlo

She smoked like wet underwear on fire, swore like a slow hockey goalie, caroused like a cheerleader on spring break in Cancun, and experienced the people she chose to experience fully, men or women. — Dennis Vickers

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

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

Painting completed my life. — 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

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

My painting carries with it the message of pain. — Frida Kahlo

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. — Caitlin Moran

My eyes roved over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte, Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling over my bed. They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight. — Heather Demetrios

I paint flowers to prevent them from dying — Frida Kahlo

I paint my own reality. — 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

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

There is nothing more precious than laughter — Frida Kahlo

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

Little deer, I've stuffed all the world's diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs. — Pascale Petit

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

They are so damn 'intellectual' and rotten that I can't stand them anymore ... I [would] rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those 'artistic' bitches of Paris. — Frida Kahlo

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

I never knew I was a surrealist till Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me I was. — Frida Kahlo

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain. — Frida Kahlo

I am nauseated by all these rotten people in Europe - and these fucking "democracies" are not worth even a crumb. — Frida Kahlo

I'm attracted to artists like Frida Kahlo, because her work was her life, her questions, her outrage, her suffering, her pain. Everything is in her work. — Madonna Ciccone

I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best. — Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo taught me a lot without ever bragging about anything. — Chavela Vargas

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. — Frida Kahlo

Desperate with the endless tedium, thoughts racing and roving and deepening since they could not find outlet in immediate action, she underwent a profound metamorphosis in character. It is questionable whether the painter known as Frida Kahlo would have existed were it not for that year of suffering and constraint. — Bertram D. Wolfe

Women who stay true to themselves are always more interesting and beautiful to me: women like Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Anna Magnani - women who have style, chic, allure and elegance. They didn't submit to any standard of beauty - they defined it. — Isabella Rossellini

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

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

There's nothing wrong with a thick eyebrow; Frida Kahlo had them. — Paloma Faith

I have not forgotten you - the nights are long and difficult. You too know that all my eyes see, all touch with myself, from any distance, is you. The caress of fabrics, the color of colors, the wires, the nerves, the pencils, the leaves, the dust, the cells, the war and the sun, everything experienced in the minutes of the non-clocks and the non-calendars and the empty non-glances, is you. You felt it, that's why you let that ship take me away from Le Havre where you never said good-bye to me. I will write to you with my eyes, always. For you is all. — 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 don't like the gringos at all. They are very boring and all have faces like unbaked rolls. — Frida Kahlo

I could kill that guy and eat it afterwards... — 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 love you more than my own skin. — 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

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

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

Why do I need feet when I have wings to fly? — 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

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

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. — Frida Kahlo

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

The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb. — Andre Breton

A tour of the Mexico City of Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo led by Barbara Kingsolver would be nice. And I certainly wouldn't turn down a tour of Johannes Vermeer's Delft led by Tracey Chevalier. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

I want to be inside your darkest everything — Frida Kahlo

My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one. — Francesca Lia Block

I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. — Frida Kahlo

I love Frida Kahlo. — Paz De La Huerta

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

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.
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.
You deserve a lover who wants to dance with you, who goes to paradise every time he looks into your eyes and never gets tired of studying your expressions.
You deserve a lover who listens when you sing, who supports you when you feel shame and respects your freedom; who flies with you and isn't afraid to fall.
You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry. — Frida Kahlo