Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who painted 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, post-colonialism, 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. This was a woman who dealt with and survived a great deal but always did so with a sense of pride, strength, and dignity. May her quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.” Frida Kahlo
2. “I was born a painter.” Frida Kahlo
3. “Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.” Frida Kahlo
4. “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” Frida Kahlo
5. “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” Frida Kahlo
6. “You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you ” Frida Kahlo
7. “My painting carries with it the message of pain.” Frida Kahlo
8. “Don’t build a wall around your own suffering – it may devour you from the inside.” Frida Kahlo
9. “Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.” Frida Kahlo
10. “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
11. “I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” Frida Kahlo
12. “Painting completed my life.” Frida Kahlo
13. “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” Frida Kahlo
14. “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.” Frida Kahlo
15. “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” Frida Kahlo
16. “I paint flowers so they will not die.” Frida Kahlo
17. “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.” Frida Kahlo
18. “Remember that every tick tock is a second of life that goes by and doesn’t repeat itself. There is in it so much intensity, so much interest, that there is only the problem of how to live it. To each one to resolve their own best as they can.” Frida Kahlo
19. “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
20. “Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.” Frida Kahlo
21. “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
22. “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
23. “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
24. “You are all the combinations of numbers of life.” Frida Kahlo
25. “I tried to drown my sorrows, but they learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.” Frida Kahlo
26. “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
27. “To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.” Frida Kahlo
28. “They say never trust a limping dog or the tears of a woman.” Frida Kahlo
29. “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
30. “I am love.” Frida Kahlo
31. “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone because I am the person I know best.” Frida Kahlo
32. “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
33. “I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.” Frida Kahlo
34. “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
35. “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
