Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Never underrate the heart capable of deeds the mind cannot conceive.”

— Delia Owens

52. “What d’ya mean, where the crawdads sing? 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.”

— Delia Owens

53. “Love must be free to wander, To land upon its chosen shore And breathe.”

— Delia Owens

54. “Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there. “Jodie, I’m so sorry you worried about leaving me. Not once did I blame you. We were the victims, not the guilty.”

— Delia Owens

55. “She’d given love a chance; now she wanted simply to fill the empty spaces. Ease the loneliness while walling off her heart.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

58. “The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep. No one cared that they held the land because nobody else wanted it. After all, it was wasteland bog.”

— Delia Owens

59. “There were also drawings of the creatures who live inside – how they eat, how they move, how they mate – because people forget about creatures who live in shells.”

— Delia Owens

60. “Tate and life and love had been the same thing. Now there was no Tate.”

— Delia Owens

61. “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

62. “I’ve always loved you. Even as a child- in a time I don’t remember- I already loved you.”

— Delia Owens

63. “Kya never went back to school a day in her life. She returned to heron watching and shell collecting, where she reckoned she could learn something. “I can already coo like a dove,” she told herself. “And lots better than them. Even with all them fine shoes.”

— Delia Owens

64. “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.”

— Delia Owens

65. “Each time I forget you Your eyes haunt my heart and it falls still. And so farewell Until the next time you come, Until at last I do not see you.”

— Delia Owens

66. “Kya had been of this land and of this water; now they would take her back. Keep her secrets deep.”

— Delia Owens

67. “You disappeared, I know not where. But your wing-marks still linger there. A broken heart cannot fly, But who decides the time to die?”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

69. “Yet in reality, she was only an abandoned child, a little girl surviving on her own in a swamp, hungry and cold, but we didn’t help her. Except for one of her only friends, Jumpin’, not one of our churches or community groups offered her food or clothes. Instead we labeled and rejected her because we thought she was different. But, ladies and gentlemen, did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her?”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

71. “Sand keeps secrets better than mud.”

— Delia Owens

72. “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

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

— Delia Owens

74. “Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”

— Delia Owens

75. “The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog.”

— Delia Owens

76. “Kya never had her troop of close friends, nor the connections Jodie described, for she never had her own family. 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. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core.”

— Delia Owens

77. “Pa never took her fishing again. Those warm days were just a thrown-in season. Low clouds parting, the sun splashing her world briefly, then closing up dark and tight-fisted again.”

— Delia Owens

78. “When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.”

— Delia Owens

79. “Love is too often The answer for staying. Too seldom the reason For going.”

— Delia Owens

80. “Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core.”

— Delia Owens

81. “Sunday Justice, the courthouse cat- his back black, his face white with a black mask around green eyes- stretched out in a puddle of sunlight in one of the deep windowsills. A courthouse fixture for years, he cleared the basement of rats and the courtroom of mice, earning his place.”

— Delia Owens

82. “And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, when the footstep of death is near.”

— Delia Owens

83. “It seemed to Kya that when Chase played these melancholy tunes was when he most had a soul.”

— Delia Owens

84. “All her life the room had been warmed from baking bread, boiling butter beans, or bubbling fish stew. Now, it was stale, quiet, and dark. “Who’s gonna cook?” she asked out loud. Could have asked, Who’s gonna dance?”

— Delia Owens

85. “I never hated people. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. Well, it’s true; I learned to live without them. Without you. Without Ma! Or anybody!”

— Delia Owens

86. “You told me that fox left her babies.” “Yeah, but that vixen got ’er leg all tore up. She’d’ve starved to death if she’d tried to feed herself ’n’ her kits. She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good.”

— Delia Owens

87. “She walked to the water’s edge. Chase would not let this go. Being isolated was one thing; living in fear, quite another.”

— Delia Owens

88. “You were supposed to be different. To stay. You said you loved me, but there is no such thing. There is no one on Earth you can count on.” From somewhere very deep, she made herself a promise never to trust or love anyone again.”

— Delia Owens

89. “Sunsets are in disguise, Covering truths, covering lies.”

— Delia Owens

90. “There is no one on Earth you can count on.” From somewhere very deep, she made herself a promise never to trust or love anyone again.”

— Delia Owens

91. “And for the first time in her life, her heart was full.”

— Delia Owens

92. “Why she hadn’t embraced the comfort he could give her in this place. It seemed that now, Kya being more vulnerable than ever, was reason to trust others even less. Standing in the most fragile place of her life, she turned to the only net she knew – herself.”

— Delia Owens

93. “I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not. I don’t know the answer. Maybe there isn’t one.”

— Delia Owens

94. “Then, one hand on the tiller, the other on lace, she glided across ocean and estuaries toward home.”

— Delia Owens

95. “Ma had said women need one another more than they need men, but she never told her how to get inside the pride.”

— Delia Owens

96. “Then she waited, flattened up against the Frigidaire like a roadkill stork.”

— Delia Owens

97. “Loneliness has a compass of its own.”

— Delia Owens

98. “Mostly, the village seemed tired of arguing with the elements, and simply sagged.”

— Delia Owens

99. “Way out yonder, where the crawdads sing.”

— Delia Owens

100. “I woke up on the right side of dirt.”

— Delia Owens