Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “She could read anything now, he said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything.”

— Delia Owens

3. “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”

— Delia Owens

4. “But, ladies and gentlemen, did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her?”

— Delia Owens

5. “Tate, listen to me. For years I longed to be with people. I really believed that someone would stay with me, that I would actually have friends and a family. Be part of a group. But no one stayed. Not you or one member of my family. Now I’ve finally learned how to deal with that and how to protect myself.”

— Delia Owens

6. “Amanda Hamilton poem. “Fading moon, follow My footsteps Through light unbroken By land shadows, And share my senses That feel the cool Shoulders of silence. “Only you know How one side of a moment Is stretched by loneliness For miles To the other edge, And how much sky Is in one breath When time slides backward From the sand.”

— Delia Owens

7. “Kya, you can’t run from every whipstitch. Sometimes you have to discuss things. Face things.”

— Delia Owens

8. “Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace – as though not built to fly – against the roar of a thousand snow geese.”

— Delia Owens

9. “The sweeping up the heart, And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity.”

— Delia Owens

10. “Then thought, Like everything else in the universe, we tumble toward those of higher mass.”

— Delia Owens

11. “A man doesn’t set up a palmetto lean-to in a bog unless he’s on the run from somebody or at the end of his own road.”

— Delia Owens

12. “Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.”

— Delia Owens

13. “Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground.”

— Delia Owens

14. “People forget about creatures that live in shells.”

— Delia Owens

15. “Tate, listen to me. For years I longed to be with people. I really believed that someone would stay with me, that I would actually have friends and a family. Be part of a group. But no one stayed. Not you or one member of my family. Now I’ve finally learned how to deal with that and how to protect myself. But I can’t talk about this now. I appreciate your coming to see me in here, I do. And maybe someday we can be friends, but I can’t think about what comes next. Not in here.”

— Delia Owens

16. “Amanda Hamilton poem. “Fading moon, follow My footsteps Through light unbroken By land shadows, And share my senses That feel the cool Shoulders of silence.”

— Delia Owens

17. “Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show.”

— Delia Owens

18. “Nobody’s come close to filling their brains. We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

— Delia Owens

19. “She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

— Delia Owens

20. “Then she whispered Emily Dickinson’s words: The sweeping up the heart, And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity.”

— Delia Owens

21. “Kya stood in the middle of her cell. Here she was in jail. If those she’d loved, including Jodie and Tate, hadn’t left her, she wouldn’t be here. Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground.”

— Delia Owens

22. “Speaking out loud, she recited an Amanda Hamilton poem: “I must let go now. Let you go. Love is too often The answer for staying. Too seldom the reason For going. I drop the line And watch you drift away. “All along You thought The fiery current Of your lover’s breast Pulled you to the deep. But it was my heart-tide Releasing you To float adrift With seaweed.”

— Delia Owens

23. “Chase was her first visitor since Tate, who had seemed as natural and accepting as other marsh creatures. With Chase, she felt exposed, as if someone were filleting her like a fish. Shame welled up inside.”

— Delia Owens

24. “Miss Catherine Danielle Clark, October 10, 1945.”

— Delia Owens

25. “Barkley Cove served its religion hard-boiled and deep-fried. Tiny as it was, the village supported four churches, and those were just for the whites; the blacks had three more.”

— Delia Owens

26. “Needing people ended in hurt.”

— Delia Owens

27. “The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.”

— Delia Owens

28. “Barkley Cove was quite literally a backwater town, bits scattered here and there among the estuaries and reeds like an egret’s nest flung by the wind.”

— Delia Owens

29. “How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”

— Delia Owens

30. “Perhaps love is best left as a fallow field.”

— Delia Owens

31. “They had known Chase since he was born. Had watched his life ease from charming child to cute teen; star quarterback and town hot shot to working for his parents. Finally, handsome man wedding the prettiest girl. Now, he sprawled alone, less dignified than the slough. Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show.”

— Delia Owens

32. “Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.”

— Delia Owens

33. “Ma used to say that.” Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: “Go as far as you can – way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” “Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.”

— Delia Owens

34. “Please don’t talk to me about isolation. No one has to tell me how it changes a person. I have lived it. I am isolation,” Kya whispered with a slight edge.”

— Delia Owens

35. “In nature – out yonder where the crawdads sing – these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation.”

— Delia Owens

36. “That’s what sisters and girlfriends are all about. Sticking together even in the mud, ’specially in mud.”

— Delia Owens

37. “Sunsets are never simple.”

— Delia Owens

38. “A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not.”

— Delia Owens

39. “Saltwater marsh, some say, can eat a cement block for breakfast, and not even the sheriff’s bunker-style office could keep it at bay. Watermarks, outlined with salt crystals, waved across the lower walls, and black mildew spread like blood vessels toward the ceiling.”

— Delia Owens

40. “She laughed for his sake, something she’d never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else.”

— Delia Owens

41. “We are married. Like the geese.”

— Delia Owens

42. “Tate was more than her first love: he shared her devotion to the marsh, had taught her to read, and was the only connection, however small, to her vanished family. He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was all she had.”

— Delia Owens

43. “Barkley Cove served its religion hard-boiled and deep-fried.”

— Delia Owens

44. “Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size. But loneliness has a compass of its own. And she went back to the beach to look for him the next day. And the next.”

— Delia Owens

45. “Speaking out loud, she recited an Amanda Hamilton poem: “I must let go now. Let you go. Love is too often The answer for staying. Too seldom the reason For going.”

— Delia Owens

46. “When in trouble, just let go. Go back to idle.”

— Delia Owens

47. “The crows had flown off when the truck came, but other birds and insects whirred above. Insolent life thrumming on.”

— Delia Owens

48. “Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean. Layers of life – squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl, fish, shrimp, oysters, fatted deer, and plump geese – were piled on the land or in the water. A man who didn’t mind scrabbling for supper would never starve.”

— Delia Owens

49. “Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”

— Delia Owens

50. “Shells the best secret-keepers of all.”

— Delia Owens