Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “At the bottom of the carton was a note.”

— Delia Owens

452. “A lesser male needs to shout to be noticed.”

— Delia Owens

453. “A small covey gathered around Chase’s parents. Patti Love wept. Sarah Singletary scowled like everybody else but discovered that she was greatly relieved. Miss Pansy hoped no one saw her jaw relax. A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.”

— Delia Owens

454. “She cooked a Southern supper as Ma would have: black-eyed peas with red onions, fried ham, cornbread with cracklin’, butter beans cooked in butter and milk. Blackberry cobbler with hard cream with some bourbon Jodie brought.”

— Delia Owens

455. “Failure was an option we simply could not afford. We had invested all our savings -our dreams and our pride- in this venture. There was no reason to turn around; there was nothing to go back to.”

— Delia Owens

456. “She had no notion how to talk to kids, certainly not to a teacher, but she wanted to learn to read and what came after twenty-nine.”

— Delia Owens

457. “He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was she had.”

— Delia Owens

458. “Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”

— Delia Owens

459. “She insisted on keeping the kitchen as it was and the exterior unpainted, so that the dwelling, more of a cabin now, remained weathered and real.”

— Delia Owens

460. “As they climbed, the round corners of the world moved out farther and farther, the lush, rounded forests and watery marsh expanding to the very rims.”

— Delia Owens

461. “In a whisper, she asked, “Who’s who?”

— Delia Owens

462. “She could read anything now, he said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything. It was up to her. “Nobody’s come close to filling their brains,” he said. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

— Delia Owens

463. “Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya’s shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”

— Delia Owens

464. “The royalty checks would come in every six months, they said, and might be several thousand dollars each.”

— Delia Owens

465. “Imagination grows in the lonliest of soils.”

— Delia Owens

466. “Mrs. Singletary’s hair was cut short, curled tight, and colored purple as an iris in sunlight.”

— Delia Owens

467. “Before the feather game, loneliness had become a natural appendage to Kya, like an arm. Now it grew roots inside her and pressed against her chest.”

— Delia Owens

468. “Clouds lazed in the folded arms of the hills, then billowed up and drifted away. Some tendrils twisted into tight spirals and traced the warmer ravines, behaving like mist tracking the dank fens of the marsh. The same game of physics playing on a different field of biology.”

— Delia Owens

469. “Had he not been so obsessed with his own heart, perhaps he would have noticed his father’s was failing.”

— Delia Owens

470. “She sent her toes on missions to scout for cool spots between the sheets, but they found none.”

— Delia Owens

471. “Then swore louder and meaner than the wind.”

— Delia Owens

472. “So she planned up something that lots of people would see her do. Making a great alibi right in front of all those folks on Main Street. Brilliant.”

— Delia Owens

473. “Before moving, Vern stared for a long minute at Chase, as though he had overlooked something. As a doctor, he should fix this. Heavy swamp air stood.”

— Delia Owens

474. “Pa had always bought the kerosene and filled the lamp, so she hadn’t thought much about it. Until it was dark.”

— Delia Owens

475. “She’d always found the muscle and heart to pull herself from the mire, to take the next step, no matter how shaky. But where had all that grit brought her?”

— Delia Owens

476. “Back home, thinking she knew how to fix grits, she threw them into boiling water like Ma had done, but they lumped up all together in one big ball that burned on the bottom and stayed raw in the middle. So rubbery she could only eat a few bites, so she searched the garden again and found a few more turnip greens between the goldenrod. Then boiled them up and ate them all, slurping down the pot likker.”

— Delia Owens

477. “WEEK LATER, Kya heard Tate’s boat whirring.”

— Delia Owens

478. “July 4 1961 Dressed in the now too-short peach chiffon, Kya walked barefoot to the lagoon on July 4 and sat on the reading-log.”

— Delia Owens

479. “In the mountains, she noticed, the time of sunset depended on where you stood on the hill.”

— Delia Owens

480. “But when the Depression deepened, the bank auctioned the land out from under the Clarks’ feet, and his father took Jake from school.”

— Delia Owens

481. “But he had noticed her. Had held her eyes. Her breath froze as a heat flowed through her. She tracked them, mostly him, down to the shore. Her mind looking one way, her desire the other. Her body watched Chase Andrews, not her heart.”

— Delia Owens

482. “I’ve about had it with flying,” he grumbled, switching off the plane’s systems, “It’s ninety-nine percent boring and one percent sheer terror.”

— Delia Owens

483. “A hollowness that urgently needed filling pulsed through her.”

— Delia Owens

484. “Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections. Look at us; you and I have each other now, and just think, if I have kids and you have kids, well, that’s a whole new string of connections. And on it goes.”

— Delia Owens

485. “But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness.”

— Delia Owens

486. “Being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed.”

— Delia Owens

487. “But knowing that these tendencies are in our biological blueprints might help one forgive even a failed mother.”

— Delia Owens

488. “Much older than she, eleven, maybe twelve.”

— Delia Owens

489. “If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”

— Delia Owens

490. “Ma had painted the estuaries and sunsets in oils and watercolors so rich they seemed peeled from the earth. She had brought some art supplies with her and could buy bits and pieces at Kress’s Five and Dime. Sometimes Ma had let Kya paint her own pictures on brown paper bags from the Piggly Wiggly.”

— Delia Owens

491. “No one in the room had ever experienced this collective heart pounding, this shared lack of breath. Eyes shifted, hands sweated. The shrimper crew, Hal Miller, knotted his mind, fighting to confirm that it truly was Miss Clark’s boat he had seen that night. Suppose he’d been wrong. Most stared, not at the back of Kya’s head, but at the floor, the walls. It seemed that the village – not Kya – awaited judgment, and few felt the salacious joy they had expected at this juncture.”

— Delia Owens

492. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

— Delia Owens