"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 | Frida Kahlo — Wikiquote entry (quote commonly rendered “There are two great accidents in my life…One was the trolley, and the other was Diego.”); Wikiquote lists the quote but does not provide a clear primary-source citation. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kahlo, Frida. (2026, January 15). 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. January 15, 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, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-have-been-two-great-accidents-in-my-life-31279/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.







