Frida kahlo quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I love you more than my own skin.

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

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

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

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.

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

I paint my own reality.

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.

You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”

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

I paint flowers to prevent them from dying

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibitions have been a failure, because the rich bitches don't want to buy anything.

pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence

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.

There is nothing more precious than laughter

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

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.

What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

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

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

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

Really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself.

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

Painting completed my life.

My painting carries with it the message of pain.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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”.

Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

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