"There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst"
About this Quote
The context matters: the 1925 bus-tram collision shattered her body and rerouted her life into pain, surgeries, and long immobilized stretches where painting became survival. Rivera arrived later as a different kind of impact - charismatic, famous, politically committed, and chronically unfaithful. Their marriage was a spectacle and a cycle: adoration, betrayal, separation, remarriage. When she says "Diego was by far the worst", she is not ranking injuries as if heartbreak beats broken bones; she is exposing how emotional harm can be chronic, intimate, and self-renewing. A crash happens once. A relationship like theirs can happen every day.
Subtextually, the line also asserts authorship. Kahlo is often flattened into a myth of suffering; here she edits that myth with dark humor, controlling the narrative and puncturing any romanticization of Rivera as muse or genius husband. He is not a chapter in her story. He is damage with a name. The sentence is small, but it carries the larger Kahlo project: making pain legible without making it sentimental.
Quote Details
| Topic | Heartbreak |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: A History of the World Through Body Parts (Kathy Petras, Ross Petras, 2022) modern compilationISBN: 9781797205427 · ID: 2khuEAAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... Kahlo once said, “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” (Rivera intriguingly called her “the great fact of his life.”) While Rivera dominated her life ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kahlo, Frida. (2026, February 26). There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-have-been-two-great-accidents-in-my-life-31279/
Chicago Style
Kahlo, Frida. "There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst." FixQuotes. February 26, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-have-been-two-great-accidents-in-my-life-31279/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst." FixQuotes, 26 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-have-been-two-great-accidents-in-my-life-31279/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.







