Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Then, one hand on the tiller, the other on lace, she glided across ocean and estuaries toward home.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

104. “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

105. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

109. “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

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

— Delia Owens

111. “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

112. “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

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

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

— Delia Owens

117. “Months turned into a year. The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart. Months passed into another year. Then another.”

— Delia Owens

118. “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

119. “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

120. “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

121. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

125. “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

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

— Delia Owens

127. “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

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

— Delia Owens

129. “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

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

— Delia Owens

131. “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

132. “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

133. “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

134. “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

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

— Delia Owens

136. “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

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

— Delia Owens

138. “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

139. “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

140. “Within all the worlds of biology, she searched for an explanation of why a mother would leave her offspring.”

— Delia Owens

141. “The Barkley Cove graveyard trailed off under tunnels of dark oaks. Spanish moss hung in long curtains, creating cavelike sanctuaries for old tombstones – the remains of a family here, a loner there, in no order at all. Fingers of gnarled roots had torn and twisted gravestones into hunched and nameless forms. Markers of death all weathered into nubbins by elements of life. In the distance, the sea and sky sang too bright for this serious ground.”

— Delia Owens

142. “As before, the shack stood unpainted on the outside, the weathered pine boards and tin roof rich in gray and rust colors, brushed by Spanish moss from the overhanging oak. Less rickety, but still woven into the weft of the marsh. Kya continued sleeping on the porch, except in the coldest of winter. But now she had a bed.”

— Delia Owens

143. “It’s been a soul-crushing ordeal, but this seems to be a chance to start over.”

— Delia Owens

144. “Mad as a mule chewin’ bumblebees.”

— Delia Owens

145. “When they finally broke into the lagoon, where the ratty shack with rusted-out screens hunkered under the oaks, Maria clutched her youngest child, Jodie, fighting tears. Pa assured her, “Don’t ya worry none. I’ll get this fixed up in no time.” But Jake never improved the shack or finished high school. Soon after they arrived, he took up drinking and poker at the Swamp Guinea, trying to leave that foxhole in a shot glass.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

147. “Colors, which had been muted by the dimness, formed into shapes as they moved into the light. Golden hair beneath a red cap. As if coming in from a dream, Tate stood in the stern of his old fishing boat poling through the channel. Kya cut her engine and rowed backward into a thicket to watch him pass.”

— Delia Owens

148. “Jumpin’, you know how it is. They’ll take his side. They’ll say I’m just stirring up trouble.”

— Delia Owens

149. “Walking into the shack – as she always called it – Tate felt the walls exhaling her breath, the floors whispering her steps so clear he called out her name. Then he stood against the wall, weeping. He lifted the old knapsack and held it to his chest.”

— Delia Owens

150. “He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was all she had. Her heart pounded as the fury dissipated.”

— Delia Owens