Top 200 Elizabeth Acevedo Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

52. “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

53. “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

54. “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

55. “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

56. “You’re with a man who has never appreciated the everything of a wonderful woman. It is beyond him.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

57. “That love can be a band: tears if you pull it too hard, but also flexible enough to stretch around the most chaotic mass.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

59. “Who knew death must be so damn polite?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

60. “Heartbreak I never meant to hurt anyone. I didn’t see how I could by stealing kisses as I whispered promises into ears that I know now weren’t listening. I pretend not to see him in the hallway. I pretend not to see them at home. The ultimate actress because I’m always pretending, pretending I’m blind, pretending I’m fine; I should win an Oscar I do it so well.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

61. “I look out the window at the clouds parting in the same way my bad mood is, sunlight peeking through both. And I know for a fact: there’s more than one kind of magic in this world.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

62. “That’s what I learned, about him and most guys: who they are when they’re giving you flowers and trying to get in your pants is not who they REALLY are when it’s no longer spring and they’ve found a new jawn to hang out with. And I know the past isn’t a mirror image of the future, but it’s a reflection of what can be; and when your first love breaks your heart, the shards of that can still draw blood for a long, long time.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

64. “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

65. “It’s about any of the words that bring us together and how we can form a home in them.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

66. “It’s wild to miss someone so much, and yet in order to care for them you have to constantly say goodbye.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

67. “I’m always avoiding something and it seems as heavy as any cross.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

68. “I’m sorry I got in trouble. I’m sorry I have to be here. That I have to pretend to you and her that I care about confirmation at all. But I’m not sorry I kissed a boy. I’m only sorry I was caught. Or that I had to hide it at all.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

69. “And maybe because I struggle to learn certain lessons, this one has taken me years and years to learn: You can’t make too much space for a father like mine in your life. Because he’ll elbow his way in and stretch the corners wide, and when he leaves all you have is the oversized empty – the gap in your heart where a parent should be.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

70. “Hiding in my journal is the only way I know not to cry.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

71. “Trust. Yourself, mainly, but the world, too.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

72. “Such a funny phrase, pay respects. As if suffering is a debt that can be eased.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

73. “Every day I searched for new songs, and it was like applying for asylum. I just needed someone to help me escape from all the silence. I just needed people saying words about all the things that hurt them. And maybe this is why Papi stopped listening to music, because it can make your body want to rebel. To speak up. And even that young I learned music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

74. “Swoon In science we learned that thermal conductivity is how heat flows through some materials better than others. But who knew words, when said by the right person, by a boy who raises your temperature, move heat like nothing else? Shoot a shock of warmth from your curls to your toes?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

75. “How does a girl like me figure out the weight of what it means to love a boy?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

76. “And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

77. “Twin steps into his feelings like they’re a gated-off room I don’t have visitation rights to.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

78. “The world is a turntable that never stops spinning; as humans we merely choose the tracks we want to sit out and the ones that inspire us to dance.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

79. “I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

80. “If I were nothing but dust, would anyone chase the wind trying to piece me back together?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

81. “The day my period came in fifth grade, was just that, the ending of a childhood sentence. The next phrase starting in all CAPS.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

82. “The world’s been waiting for your genius a long time.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

83. “Buela fiddles with her wedding band before looking at me. “I’m not sick, Emoni. I’ve lied to you. I haven’t had all those doctor’s appointments. I just needed a private afternoon with my thoughts where I’m not in this house. Where I’m Gloria again, and not only ‘Buela. I don’t know how to explain it. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

84. “I don’t know what I’m going to be or who I am not. My own desires are thickly layered like the food on my plate. But I know that one day soon, I’ll be a grown-ass woman. So I let myself enjoy the meal, the moment and my own company.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

85. “Every now and then, I dress my thoughts in the clothing of a poem.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

86. “Remember anger is as much a sin as any Xiomara may have committed. We all need time to come to terms with certain things, don’t we?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

87. “And now his smile is a little sad. And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

88. “I feel like something has risen inside me too, and it tastes a bit like hope.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

89. “My Aunt Sara says it’s in our blood, an innate need to tell a story through food. ‘Buela says it’s definitely a blessing, magic.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

90. “Ah, and that’s why it is magic. Not all recipes in life are easily understood or followed or deconstructed. Sometimes you have to take what is given to you and use your talents to brew the best tea possible.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

91. “And I try to tell myself the same thing: forward is the only direction to go in; turning back around is for the birds.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

92. “This is a place where two worlds collided: Beautiful because of the struggle that happened to create it, holy because of the belief people had in it, a home, a masterpiece of art, a mixture of different cultures.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

93. “When your body takes up more room than your voice you are always the target of well-aimed rumors, which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

94. “Everything changes. I’ll learn to be fine.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

95. “Home. I come from a place that’s as sweet as the freshest berry, as sour as curdled milk, where we dream of owning mansions and leaving the hood, where we couldn’t imagine having been raised anywhere else.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

96. “It’s not like that anymore, but one thing I know for sure is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them. So I walk through metal detectors, and turn my pockets out, and greet security guards by name, and am one of hundreds who every day are sifted like flour through the doors. And I keep my head down, and I cause no waves. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this place is a place, neither safe nor unsafe, just a means, just a way to get closer to escape.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

97. “The ultimate actress because I’m always pretending, pretending I’m blind, pretending I’m fine; I should win an Oscar I do it so well.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

98. “Freedom seems like such a big word. Something too big; maybe like a skyscraper I’ve glimpsed from the foot of the building but never been invited to climb.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

99. “See, a cuero is any skin. A cuero is just a covering. A cuero is a loose thing. Tied down by no one. Fluttering and waving in the wind. Flying. Flying. Gone.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

100. “In a situation like this, how would anyone know so easily right from wrong when it seems we are all pivoting left, spinning in circles.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo