Hayden Herrera > Quotes

“The steel handrail had literally skewered her body at the level of the abdomen; entering on the left side, it had come out through the vagina.
"I lost my virginity," she said.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

“There is nothing to do but put up with it. I have a cat's luck." Her indomitable will had begun to triumph over despair and apathy.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

“Mais Frida ne se représente pas comme un personnage sacré, car elle constate son état avec une crudité toute profane. Au lieu de du plier le Ciel de la délivrer, elle regarde droit devant elle, comme pour se défier (ou défier son reflet dans le miroir) et contraindre le spectateur à affronter sa terrible situation sans flancher.”
― Hayden Herrera

“When the time came to go to school, Frida and Cristina went together. “When I was three or four years of age they sent Cristi and me to a kindergarten,” Frida remembered. “The teacher was old-fashioned, with false hair and the strangest dresses. My first memory is of this teacher. She was standing in front of the dark classroom holding in one hand a candle and in the other an orange and explaining how the universe worked, the sun, the earth, and the moon. It made such an impression on me that I urinated.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

“Similarly, Frida would choose to paint her own face always as an impassive mask to hide the disquiet within.”
― Hayden Herrera

“Though she painted death - her own metaphorically and that of others literally - Frida was not able to paint her accident. Years later, she said that she had wanted to, but couldn't because to her, the accident was too "complicated" and "important" to reduce to a single comprehensible image. There is only an undated drawing. . . Its brusque, crude draftsmanship suggests the subject provoked so much distress that Frida could not control her line.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

“could have been a second or thousands of years. . . . I was happy. I blurred the “door” with my hand and it “disappeared.” I ran with my secret and my joy as far as the furthermost corner of the patio of my house, and always in the same place under a cedar tree, I cried out and laughed, surprised at being alone with my great happiness and with the so vivid memory of the little girl. Thirty-four years have passed since I experienced this magic friendship and every time that I remember it, it revives and becomes larger and larger inside of my world.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

“Men’s sexual organ was “just in one place,” said Rivera. Women’s, on the other hand, was “all over the body, and therefore two women together would have a much more extraordinary experience.”
― Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo