145+ Extraordinary Frida Kahlo Quotes [NEW & EXCLUSIVE]

Frida Kahlo de Rivera, considered one of the Mexico’s greatest artist, is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. Her self-portraits deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death.

Since she was so far ahead of her time, Frida Kahlo quotes not only inspire you to transform pain into beauty, but also inspire you to embrace your full life.

The artist had a way to express profound emotion through art and words. So, inspirational drawing quotes and photography tagline will empower you to find your own voice.

Top 10 Frida Kahlo Quotes

Feet, what do I need you for 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

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. – 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 never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. – Frida Kahlo

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

I hope the leaving is joyful; and I hope never to return. – 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 think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive. – 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

Best Frida Kahlo Quotes

Full of emotion, beauty and art, wise Frida Kahlo quotes will give you strength and motivation you need. Open up your mind to legendary artists, and explore beautiful Vincent Van Gogh quotes and memorable Leonardo da Vinci quotes to be filled with inspiration!

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

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

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

Painting completed my life. – Frida Kahlo

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

The most interesting thing about the so-called lies of Diego is that, sooner or later, the ones involved in the imaginary tale get angry, not because of the lies, but because of the truth contained in the lies, which always comes forth. – Frida Kahlo

I love you more than my own skin. – 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

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain. – 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

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 cannot speak of Diego as my husband because that term, when applied to him, is an absurdity. He never has been, nor will he ever be, anybody’s husband. – Frida Kahlo

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

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

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

You didn’t understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure. I am essence. I am an idiot. I am tenacious. I am. I simply am. – Frida Kahlo

The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes. – Frida Kahlo

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

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’ bitch*s of Paris. – Frida Kahlo

I want to be inside your darkest everything. – 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

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

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

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. – Frida Kahlo

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

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

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

I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better. – 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 of this. I think work is the best. – Frida Kahlo

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. – Frida Kahlo

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

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. – Frida Kahlo

I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love. – Frida Kahlo

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 warn you that in this picture I am painting of Diego there will be colors which even I am not fully acquainted with. Besides, I love Diego so much I cannot be an objective speculator of him or his life. – Frida Kahlo

I want to be inside your darkest everything. – Frida Kahlo

It is terrifying to see the rich having parties’ day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger… – 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

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. – Frida Kahlo

Don’t build a wall around your suffering. It may devour you from the inside. – Frida Kahlo

I don’t want anything to hurt him, nothing to bother him and rob him of the energy he needs for living, for living as he likes, for painting, seeing, loving, eating, sleeping, being by himself, being with someone…but I’d never want him to be sad. If I had good health, I would give him all of it, if I had youth, he could take it all. – 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

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 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

From you to my hands, I caress your entire body, and I am with you for a minute and I am with myself for a moment. And my blood is the miracle which runs in the vessels of the air from my heart to yours. – Frida Kahlo

All this anger has simply made me understand better that I love you more than my own skin, and that even though you don’t love me as much, you love me a little anyway — don’t you? If this is not true, I’ll always be hopeful that it could be, and that’s enough for me. – 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

Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. 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. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps filling all the paths of my nerves which are yours. – 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

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

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

My Diego: Mirror of the night Your eyes green swords inside my flesh. waves between our hands. All of you in a space full of sounds — in the shade and in the light. You were called AUXOCHROME the one who captures color. I CHROMOPHORE — the one who gives color. You are all the combinations of numbers. life. My wish is to understand lines form shades movement. You fulfill and I receive. 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

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

You too know that all my eyes see, all I touch with myself, from any distance, is Diego. 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 him. – 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 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 goodbye to me. I will write to you with my eyes, always. For you is all. – Frida Kahlo

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

Diego was everything; my child, my lover, my universe. – 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

Famous Frida Kahlo Quotes

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

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim. – Frida Kahlo

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. – Frida Kahlo

Love me a little. I adore you. – Frida Kahlo

Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing. – Frida Kahlo

You are all the combinations of numbers of life. – Frida Kahlo

Why do I need feet when I have wings to fly? – Frida Kahlo

My paintings are well-painted, not nimbly but patiently. – Frida Kahlo

This upper class is disgusting and I’m furious at all these rich people here, having seen thousands of people in abject squalor. – 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

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

There is nothing more precious than laughter. – Frida Kahlo

There isn’t enough time there, isn’t enough nothing. There is only reality. What once was is long gone! What remains, are the transparent roots appearing transformed into an eternal fruit tree Your fruits already give scent your flowers give color blooming in the joy of wind and flower. – 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

Everyone’s opinions about things change over time. Nothing is constant. Everything changes. – Frida Kahlo

I’ll wait for you. You responded to a sense with your voice and I’m full of you, waiting for your words which will make me grow and will enrich me. – Frida Kahlo

To trap one’s self-suffering is to risk being devoured from the inside. – Frida Kahlo

Through the round numbers and the colored nerves the stars are made and the worlds are sounds. – Frida Kahlo

Years. Waiting with anguish hidden away, my spine broken, and the immense glance, footless through the vast path… Carrying on my life enclosed in steel. – Frida Kahlo

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

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

There is nothing left everything revolves. – Frida Kahlo

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

Inspirational Frida Kahlo Quotes

A despair which no words can describe. I’m still eager to live. I’ve started to paint again. A little picture to give to Dr. Farill on which I’m working with all my love. I feel uneasy about my painting. – Frida Kahlo

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

We like being sick to protect ourselves. Someone – something – always protects us from the truth – Our own ignorance and fear. Fear of everything – fear of knowing that we are no more than vectors direction construction and destruction to be alive. – Frida Kahlo

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

So forgotten and so firm. Snail shells and the bride-doll, is yours too – I mean, it is you. – Frida Kahlo

Quietly, the grief, loudly the pain. The accumulated poison love faded away. Mine was a strange world of criminal silences of strangers’ watchful eyes misreading the evil. Darkness in the daytime, I didn’t live the nights. – Frida Kahlo

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

You too know that all my eyes see, all I touch with myself, from any distance, is Diego. – Frida Kahlo

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

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

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

Loyalty is important to me. Can you be loyal? – Frida Kahlo

Her view of life, she told a friend, was: ‘Make love. Take a bath. Make love again.’ – Frida Kahlo

I don’t need rescuing, Diego. – Frida Kahlo

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

I just want your serious opinion. – Frida Kahlo

What do you think matters most for a good marriage? – Frida Kahlo

They say never trust a limping dog or the tears of a woman. – Frida Kahlo

I paint flowers to prevent them from dying. – Frida Kahlo

It is certain that they are going to amputate my right leg. Details I don’t know much but the opinions are very reliable. Dr. Luis Mendes and Dr. Juan Farill. I’m very very, worried, but at the same time, I feel it would be a relief. In the hope that when I walk again I’ll give what remains of my courage to Diego. Everything for Diego. – Frida Kahlo

Name of Diego. Name of love. Don’t let the tree get thirsty it loves you so much. It treasured your seed, it crystallized your life at six in the morning. – Frida Kahlo

You left us, Chabela Villasenor. But your voice, your electricity, your enormous talent, your poetry, your light, your mystery, all that remains of you – is still alive. – 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

They amputated my leg 6 months ago It seemed to me centuries of torture and at times I nearly went crazy. I still feel like committing suicide Diego prevents me from doing it in the vain belief that maybe he will need me. He has told me so and I believe him. But I have never suffered so much in my life. I’ll wait a while. – Frida Kahlo

If only, I had his caresses upon me. As the air touches the earth – the reality of his person would make me merrier, it would take me away from the feeling which fills me with gray. Nothing inside me would be so deep, so final. But how can I explain to him my need for tenderness! My loneliness over the years. My structure displeases because of its lack of harmony, its unfitness. I think it would be better for me to go, to go and not to run away. If it were all over within an instant. – Frida Kahlo

It is six o’clock in the morning and the turkeys are singing, the warmth of human tenderness. Companionable solitude. Never, in all my life will I forget your presence. You took me to you when I was shattered and you restored me to a complete whole. In this small world, where shall I turn my eyes? It’s deep immense! – Frida Kahlo

My Diego. I’m no longer alone. Wings? You keep me company. You lull me to sleep and make me come alive. – Frida Kahlo

I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. – Frida Kahlo

I could kill that guy and eat it afterwards… – Frida Kahlo

I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling. – Frida Kahlo

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. – 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. – Frida Kahlo

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 him. – Frida Kahlo

And to hold onto some dogged idea forever is a little rigid and maybe naive. – Frida Kahlo

If you’re searching for famous quotes about life to share with the people you love or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an inspiring collection of Alan Watts quotes, Dalai Lama quotes and sayings by Maya Angelou.

Some Facts About Frida Kahlo