Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind.”

— Delia Owens

102. “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

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

— Delia Owens

104. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

108. “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

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

— Delia Owens

110. “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

111. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

114. “Months passed into another year. Then another.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

118. “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

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

— Delia Owens

120. “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

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

— Delia Owens

122. “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

123. “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

124. “Dully she watched fireflies scribbling across the night. She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it’s not in a jar.”

— Delia Owens

125. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

129. “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

130. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

133. “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

134. “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

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

— Delia Owens

136. “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

137. “We called her the Marsh Girl; now scientific institutions recognize her as the Marsh Expert.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

140. “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

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Delia Owens

144. “A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.”

— Delia Owens

145. “Birds sing mostly at dawn because the cool, moist air of morning carries their songs and their meanings much farther.”

— Delia Owens

146. “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

147. “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

148. “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

149. “The view a chick gets, she reckoned, when it finally breaks its shell.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens