Elizabeth Acevedo Quotes

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.

It is easy in a moment like this to want to speak over this woman, to tell Tía there is nothing more we can do, to say out loud the woman is lucky that her lungs still draw breath. But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead. You do not call bad spirits into the room, & you do not smudge a person's dignity by pretending they are not still alive, & right in front of you, and perhaps about to receive a miracle. You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities.

And I think about all the things we could be
if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.

When has anyone ever told me
I had the right to stop it all
without my knuckles, or my anger,
with just some simple words.

You're the author on your own life story.

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.

We also know exactly what it's like to look at the other & see all the answers of ourselves there.

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

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 draw blood for a long, long time.

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.

This was supposed to be a question. Not a poem confession or whatever it's become. I just want to know if you would listen with me to the sound of our heartbeats.

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.

i think of all the things we could be if we were not told our bodies were not made for them.

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.

It almost feel like
the more I bruise the page
the quicker something inside me heals.
(p. 283)

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

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

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.

Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I've pressed onto them.
It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.

...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

I've learned to trust pretty words even less than a pretty face.

And I'm disgusted at myself
for the slight excitement
that shivers up my back

at the same time that I wish
my body could fold into the tiniest corner
for me to hide in.

Since my earliest memory, I imagined I would be a chef one day. When other kids were watching Saturday morning cartoons or music videos on YouTube, I was watching Iron Chef,The Great British Baking Show, and old Anthony Bourdain shows and taking notes. Like, actual notes in the Notes app on my phone. I have long lists of ideas for recipes that I can modify or make my own. This self-appointed class is the only one I've ever studied well for.
I started playing around with the staples of the house: rice, beans, plantains, and chicken. But 'Buela let me expand to the different things I saw on TV. Soufflés, shepherd's pie, gizzards. When other kids were saving up their lunch money to buy the latest Jordans, I was saving up mine so I could buy the best ingredients. Fish we'd never heard of that I had to get from a special market down by Penn's Landing. Sausages that I watched Italian abuelitas in South Philly make by hand. I even saved up a whole month's worth of allowance when I was in seventh grade so I could make 'Buela a special birthday dinner of filet mignon.

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

Mami was born en La Capital, in a barrio of thirst buckets/who wrote odes to her legs,/but the only man Mami wanted/was nailed to a cross.

Sometimes someone says something and their words are like the catch of a gas stove, the click, click while you're waiting for it to light up and flame big and blue...

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

I've forced my skin as thick as I am.

The rest of the world has moved on
to bigger & juicier news;
so many of us here seem suspended

in time, still waiting for more
information, still hoping
this is a nightmare we'll wake from.

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

Fight until you can't breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win while smiling the whole damn time.

That's when I feel like a fake.
Because I nod, and clap, and "Amen" and Aleluya,"
all the while feeling like this house his house
is no longer one I want to rent.

maybe we're doing our train audience a favor.
Reminding them of first love.

And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

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

The world's been waiting for your genius a long time.

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.

She tells me words give people permission to be their fullest self and aren't these the poems I most needed to hear?

God, if you're a thing with ears:
please, please.

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.

Papi was a man split in two, / playing a game against himself. // But the problem with that / is that in order to win, you also always lose.

So he created a theater of his life / & got lost in all the different roles he had to play.

It was just a poem, Xiomara, I think.

But it felt more like a gift.

Everything changes. I'll learn to be fine.

My little words
feel important, for just a moment.
This is a feeling I could get addicted to.

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

That my poetry has become something I'm proud of.
The way the words say what I mean,
how they twist and turn language,
how they connect with people.
How they build a community.

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?

As to your last assignment, I did make up a recipe inspired by my name. Although Julio has told me before it means "faith," I don't think I understood why my mother might have wanted to name me that until this year. And so I decided to make a remix of flambé shrimp à la Emoni, because what better way to take a leap of faith than to set something on fire and trust it will not only come out right, but that it will be completely delicious?

But who knew the 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?

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

Burn it! Burn it. This is where the poems are," I say, thumping a fist against my chest. "Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too?

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

Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.

The weird thing about the bible is that almost everything in it is a metaphor.

So it seems to me that when the bible describes church as a place where two or more people discuss God, they don't mean just the cathedral like churches. I don't know what, who or where God is; but if everything is a metaphor, I think he or she is a comparison to us. I think we are like, or as God. I think when we get together, and talk about ourselves, about being human, about what hurts us; we are also talking about God.

So that's also church, right?

I know this might seem blasphemous, but my priest tells me its okay to ask questions, even if they seem bizarre.

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.

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

Things you can buy
with half a million dollars:

a car that looks more
like a space creature than a car.

A designer platinum purse
to carry a small dog. A small dog.

A performance by your favorite
musical artist for your birthday.

A diamond-encrusted
bottle of Dominican rum.

A mansion. A yacht. A hundred
acres of land. Houses, but not homes.

All four years of college
or beautician school & certificate.

Five hundred flights
to the Dominican Republic.

A half million Dollar Store chess sets,
with their accompanying boxes.

A hundred thousand copies
of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Apparently a father.

The way the words say what I mean,
how they twist and turn language,
how they connect with people.
How they build community.

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

I was that girl your moms warns you about being friends with. And warns you about becoming

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.

Mami wanted me to be a lady: sit up straight, cross my ankles, let men protect me. Papi wanted me to be a leader. To think quick & strike hard, to speak rarely, but when I did, to always be heard. Me? Playing chess taught me a queen is both: deadly & graceful, poised & ruthless. Quiet & cunning. A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time

This stuff is complicated. But it's like i'm some long division problem folks keep wanting to parcel into pieces, and they don't reduce, homies. The whole of me is Black. The whole of me is whole.

...food is meant to feed more than an empty belly. It's also meant to nourish your heart." -Emoni