Top 200 Elizabeth Acevedo Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You’re the author on your own life story.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

2. “The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

3. “And I can’t trust this world to teach their sons how to treat my daughter. So I will raise her to be a sword, a spear, a shield.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

4. “I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share, an unopened present, a gift no one wants.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

5. “Cooking is about respect. Respect for the food, respect for your space, respect for your colleqgues and respect for your diners. The chef who ignores one of those is not a chef at all.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

6. “Maybe there are no words to say. I just want to be held.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

7. “Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody’s friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don’t want to be in their own.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

8. “Except. I once heard a rumor that goldfish have an evolutionary gene where they’ll only develop as big as the tank they’re put into. They need space to stretch. And I wonder if Twin and I are keeping each other small. Taking up the space that would have let the other grow.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

9. “There is an artist my mother loved, Juan Gabriel, who was once asked in an interview if he was gay. His reply: What’s understood need not be said. I remember how Mami’s eyes fluttered to me like a bee on a flower acknowledging the pollen is sweet.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

10. “Just because your father’s present, doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

11. “Because no one will ever take care of me but me.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

12. “People say that you’re stuck with the family you’re born into. And for most people, that’s probably true. But we all make choices about people. Who we want to hold close, who we want to remain in our lives, and who we are just fine without.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

13. “If Medusa was Dominican and had a daughter, she might wonder at this curse. At how her blood is always becoming some fake hero’s mission. Something to be slayed, conquered.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

14. “In bed at night my fingers search a heat I have no name for.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

15. “I think you should write about the one that scares you most. Taking risks and making choices in spite of fear – it’s what makes our life story compelling.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

16. “It’s funny how the smallest moments are like dominoes lining up, being stacked with the purpose of knocking you on your ass. In a good way.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

17. “Maybe anger is like a river. Maybe it crumbles everything around it. Maybe it hides so many skeletons beneath the rolling surface.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

18. “I feel like I’m being pulled in a hundred different directions and my feet are stuck in cement.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

19. “It is ungrateful to feel like a burden. It is ungrateful to resent my own birth. I know that Twin and I are miracles. Aren’t we reminded every single day?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

20. “I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

21. “How can you lose an entire person, only to gain a part of them back in someone entirely new?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

22. “What’s the point of God giving me life, if I can’t live it as my own?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

23. “I will not stand still while the world makes my choices. This Yahaira will learn what carving your own way means.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

24. “I’ve had a lot of things to feel ashamed about and I’ve learned most of them are other people’s problems, not mine.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

25. “She tells me words give people permission to be their fullest self and aren’t these the poems I most needed to hear?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

26. “The body is a funny piece of meat. How it inflates and deflates in order to keep you alive. But how simple words can fill you up or pierce the air out of you.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

27. “You can’t run from what hurts you or like a dog smelling fear that grief will just keep chasing with ever sharp teeth.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

28. “I will never let anyone see my full heart and destroy it.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

29. “She knew since she was little, the world would not sing her triumphs, but she took all of the stereotypes and put them in a chokehold until they breathed out the truth.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

30. “My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews wearing pretty florals and a soft smile. They got combat boots and a mouth silent until it’s sharp as an island machete.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

31. “But one thing I learned from the Saints, when the crossroads are open to you, you must decide a path. I will not stand still while the world makes my choices.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

32. “If my body was a Country Club soda bottle, it’s one that has been shaken and dropped and at any moment it’s gonna pop open and surprise the whole damn world.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

33. “She would smile and say I was her premio for hard work, I was her premio for patience. And I loved being her reward. The golden trophy of her life. I just don’t know when I got too big for the appointed pedestal.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

34. “Boys have wanted to kiss me since I was eleven, and back then I didn’t want to kiss them. And then it was grown-ass boys, or legit men, giving me sneaky looks, and Mami told me I’d have to pray extra so my body didn’t get me into trouble. And I knew then what I’d known since my period came: my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out of the body God gave me. My body was a problem. And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it. I wanted to forget I had this body at all.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

35. “We’re wild women, flinging verses at each other like grenades in a battlefield, a cacophony of violent poems.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

36. “If I say those words, if I snap apart the air with them, whatever is binding me together will split too.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

37. “I should be used to it. I shouldn’t get so angry when boys – and sometimes grown-ass men – talk to me however they want, think they can grab themselves or rub against me or make all kinds of offers. But I’m never used to it. And it always makes my hands shake. Always makes my throat tight.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

38. “My brother was birthed a soft whistle: quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound. But I was born all the hurricane he needed to lift – and drop – those that hurt him to the ground.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

39. “Deadly and graceful, poised and ruthless. Quiet and cunning. A queen offers her hand to be kissed, and can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

40. “And sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can’t.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

41. “Can you miss someone you never met? Of course, the answer is yes.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

42. “And I knew then what I’d known since my period came: my body was trouble. I had to pray the trouble out of the body God gave me. My body was a problem. And I didn’t want any of these boys to be the ones to solve it. I wanted to forget I had this body at all.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

43. “I close my eyes and let myself find in music what I’ve always searched for: a way away.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

44. “It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

45. “And even that young I learned music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

46. “But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

47. “And I’m not the type to believe “everything is a sign” or whatever, but when so many parts of my life all point in one direction... it’s hard not to follow the arrows.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

48. “Can you be from a place you have never been? You can find the island stamped all over me, but what would the island find if I was there? Can you claim a home that does not know you, much less claim you as its own?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

49. “Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

50. “My Mother and I Might never be friends. Will never shop for a prom dress together and paint designs on each other’s nails. My mother and I might never learn how to give and accept an apology from the other. We might be too much the same mirror.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo