Top 200 Elizabeth Acevedo Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “We’re wild women, flinging verses at each other like grenades in a battlefield, a cacophony of violent poems.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

52. “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

53. “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

54. “If there was one thing I learned once my belly started showing it’s that you can’t control how people look at you, but you can control how far back you pull your shoulders and how high you lift your chin.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

55. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

58. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

68. “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

69. “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

70. “There is freedom in choosing to sit and be still when everything is always telling you to move, move fast.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

71. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

73. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

76. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

78. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

81. “Make poems from the sharp feelings inside, that feel like they could carve me wide open.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

90. “When your body takes up more room than your voice, you are always the target of well-aimed rumors.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

91. “It happens when I wear shorts. It happens when I wear jeans. It happens when I stare at the ground. It happens when I stare ahead. It happens when I’m walking. It happens when I’m sitting. It happens when I’m on my phone. It simply never stops.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

92. “Swimming might be the closest to flying a human being can get. There is something about your body displacing water in order to propel through space that makes you feel Godtouched. That makes me understand evolution, that we really must have crawled up from the sea.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

93. “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

94. “I am theirs. You can see them on me. But I am also all mine, mostly.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

95. “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

96. “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

97. “My hands learned how to bleed when other kids tried to make him into a wound.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

98. “She knows me in ways I don’t have to explain.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

100. “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