Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.”

— Delia Owens

102. “You came again, blinding my eyes like the shimmer of sun upon the sea. Just as I feel free the moon casts your face upon the sill. 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

103. “Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn’t recall their ages. They lived with Ma and Pa, squeezed together like penned rabbits, in the rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks.”

— Delia Owens

104. “Someone knew her name. She was taken aback. Felt anchored to something; released from something else.”

— Delia Owens

105. “She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it’s not in a jar.”

— Delia Owens

106. “To the Feather Boy Thank you From the Marsh Girl.”

— Delia Owens

107. “That evening, after the fishing boy led her home through the marsh, Kya sat cross-legged on her porch bed. Mist from the downpour eased through the patched-up screen, touching her face. She thought about the boy. Kind yet strong, like Jodie.”

— Delia Owens

108. “Finally the fear came. From a place deeper than the sea. Fear from knowing she would be alone again. Probably always. A life sentence.”

— Delia Owens

109. “Long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace-as thought not built to fly.”

— Delia Owens

110. “Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ’cause they’re forever. Without a vow.”

— Delia Owens

111. “Go as far as you can – way out yonder where the crawdads sing.”

— Delia Owens

112. “Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.”

— Delia Owens

113. “Tate remembered his dad’s definition of a man: one who can cry freely, feel poetry and opera in his heart, and do whatever it takes to defend a woman. Scupper would have understood tracking love through mud.”

— Delia Owens

114. “Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.”

— Delia Owens

115. “Standing in the most fragile place of her life, she turned to the only net she knew – herself.”

— Delia Owens

116. “The dishonest signals of fireflies, all she knew of love.”

— Delia Owens

117. “Tate couldn’t stop staring. She must be thirteen or fourteen, he thought. But even at that age, she had the most striking face he’d ever seen. Here large eyes nearly black, her nose slender over shapely lips, painted her in an exotic light. She was tall, thin, giving her a fragile, lithesome look as though molded wild by the wind. Yet young, strapping muscles showed through with quiet power.”

— Delia Owens

118. “The marsh snuggled in closer with a low fog, and she slept.”

— Delia Owens

119. “I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not.”

— Delia Owens

120. “Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail.”

— Delia Owens

121. “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. Now, you got any ideas where we can meet?”

— Delia Owens

122. “Kya watched others. The females got what they wanted – first a mate, then a meal – just by changing their signals. Kya knew judgment had no place here. Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the players. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”

— Delia Owens

123. “Trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind.”

— Delia Owens

124. “Eu me importei... Disse tudo que pensava com as palavras mais suaves que sabia. E agora... devo dizer que estou feliz porque acabou...”

— Delia Owens

125. “You can’t get hurt when you love someone from the other side of an estuary. All the years she rejected him, she survived because he was somewhere in the marsh, waiting. But now perhaps he would no longer be there.”

— Delia Owens

126. “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

127. “Nature seemed the only stone that would not slip midstream.”

— Delia Owens

128. “Op een andere plek, in een andere tijd, hadden een oude zwarte man en een jonge blanke vrouw elkaar kunnen omhelzen, maar niet daar, niet toen.”

— Delia Owens

129. “Those looking for serious land moved on, and this infamous marsh became a net, scooping up a mishmash of mutinous sailors, castaways, debtors, and fugitives dodging wars, taxes, or laws that they didn’t take to.”

— Delia Owens

130. “But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness. A pain as large as her heart lived in her chest. Nothing eased it. Not the gulls, not a splendid sunset, not the rarest of shells.”

— Delia Owens

131. “The bits and bones of a life. The stones of her stream.”

— Delia Owens

132. “Part of her longed to touch his hand, a strange wanting, but her fingers wouldn’t do it. Instead she memorized the bluish veins on the inside of his wrist, as intricate as those sketched on the wings of wasps.”

— Delia Owens

133. “Kya looked at her toes. Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness? She didn’t answer.”

— Delia Owens

134. “Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand.”

— Delia Owens

135. “Blending in with the fighting, drinking, cussing renegades of the marsh was the easiest thing Jake ever did.”

— Delia Owens

136. “No longer did she daydream of winging with eagles; perhaps when you have to paw your supper from mud, imagination flattens to that of adulthood.”

— Delia Owens

137. “In another time and place, an old black man and a young white woman might have hugged. But not there, not then.”

— Delia Owens

138. “Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.”

— Delia Owens

139. “Her impulse, as always, was to run. But there was another sensation. A fullness she hadn’t felt for years. As if something warm had been poured inside her heart.”

— Delia Owens

140. “It was you, Tate,” she said, and then thought, It was always you. One side of her heart longing, the other shielding.”

— Delia Owens

141. “Chase stood a little distance away, watching as Kya disappeared into the spiraling birds. He hadn’t planned on feeling anything for this strange and feral barefoot girl, but watching her swirl across the sand, birds at her fingertips, he was intrigued by her self-reliance as well as her beauty. He’d never known anyone like Kya; a curiosity as well as desire stirred in him.”

— Delia Owens

142. “Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: “‘There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’” “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” “You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can’t read.” “It ain’t just that.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.” He smiled. “That’s a very good sentence. Not all words hold that much.”

— Delia Owens

143. “When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just.”

— Delia Owens

144. “You probably don’t remember, but after she walked away, you told me that a she-fox will sometimes leave her kits if she’s starving or under some other extreme stress.”

— Delia Owens

145. “Illogical behavior to fill an emptiness would not fulfill much more. How much do you trade to defeat lonesomeness?”

— Delia Owens

146. “There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work.”

— Delia Owens

147. “His desire to protect her was as strong as the other. Sometimes.”

— Delia Owens

148. “I hafta go, Kya. Can’t live here no longer.” She almost turned to him, but didn’t. Wanted to beg him not to leave her alone with Pa, but the words jammed up. “When you’re old enough you’ll understand,” he said. Kya wanted to holler out that she may be young, but she wasn’t stupid.”

— Delia Owens

149. “If only you could, some way, forgive me.” He breathed in and waited. Kya looked at her toes. Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness? She didn’t answer.”

— Delia Owens

150. “Even in nature, parenthood is a thinner line than one might think.”

— Delia Owens