Top 200 Elizabeth Acevedo Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

52. “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

53. “Some days, when my feelings are like this, like a full pot of water with the fire on high, I don’t know what to cook. Plans and ideas escape my mind and instead I let my heart and hands take control, guided by a voice on the inside that tells me what goes where.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

54. “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

55. “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

56. “Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too? You would burn me, wouldn’t you, if you could?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

57. “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

58. “You Don’t Have to Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— 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. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

65. “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

66. “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

67. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

70. “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

71. “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

72. “And ain’t that what it means to be a sister? Holding things tight when the other one is falling apart?”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

73. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

75. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

77. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

82. “She’s also little – like, for real petite – but carries herself big, know what I mean? Like she’s used to shouldering her way through any assumptions made about her.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

84. “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

85. “One thing I know for sure is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

86. “About a holy trinity that don’t include the mother.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

87. “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

88. “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

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo

92. “Whatever we are to become, I’m glad that we can laugh through the uncomfortable moments.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

93. “No es lo bastante distinguido para un soneto, es demasiado elaborado para ser una escritura libre, y ocupa demasiado espacio en mis pensamientos para ser un haiku.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

94. “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

95. “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

96. “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

97. “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

98. “Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house who isn’t heard is me.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

99. “I let go of a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I don’t know much about pathogens and storing sugar, but damn if I don’t know how to cook good food that makes people hungry for more, that makes people remember food is meant to feed more than an empty belly. It’s also meant to nourish your heart. And that’s one thing you won’t ever learn from no textbook.”

— Elizabeth Acevedo

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

— Elizabeth Acevedo