Ellen Hagan > Quotes

“You have to find where you are needed.
You cannot wait for other people.
You would be waiting forever,” my mom adds.
“Same with the island. It was us.
It was the grandmothers. The mothers.
It was you, Isa and Eliza, who started this organization.
It was the women who saw the need and met it.
Face forward. Unafraid. Who showed up. It was us.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“You are the ocean to me,” he says.
I shake my head. “Is that line you say to every girl?”
“Uhh…no! I have never compared anyone else to a massive body of water that could take me under.”
“You think I could take you under?”
“I think you already have.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“Finding people to follow our struggle.
And it’s true we are still struggling all these years later.
Still watching the rising tide, still re-building, re-zoning, re-doing, re-imagining, still wondering how we’ll become whole again. After losing so much. We push on.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“Milo stands forward in front of the camera and says, “This project was a mistake by my family. By my father. By me. I see that now. And we are not moving.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“Seeing my mom & Yara hustling every day at the restaurant, making something out of nothing & my dad volunteering to help everyone on the block rebuild. New Jersey Strong just meant working ourselves to exhaustion. & when everyone started coming back, the tourists, the visitors, the weekenders, it just meant being strong for everyone else.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“After the storm,
what is left
behind?”
― Ellen Hagan

“While our own families struggled to keep afloat.
Everyone else showed up to watch us drown.
And then snatch up what we inevitably left behind.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“We have to pay attention. See who is the most hurt.
It is the Indigenous communities in Nicaragua and Honduras.
It is those struggling in Puerto Rico.
It was Black communities during Hurricane Katrina when the levees broke and people were left on their rooftops waving flags, with no help in sight.
Who gets hit the hardest? Bangladesh, Manila, Cartagena.
All the places that flood, are flooded.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“The same questions stay on our minds.
Who do we want to be?
How will we be remembered?”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane

“I am waiting to be the me I am proud of and not the one I am scared of being.”
― Ellen Hagan, Don't Call Me a Hurricane