Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

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

— Delia Owens

153. “Unworthy boys make a lot of noise.”

— Delia Owens

154. “Well, we better hide way out there where the crawdads sing. I pity any foster parents who take you on.” Tate’s whole face smiled.”

— Delia Owens

155. “Ma was isolated and alone. Under those circumstances people behave differently.”

— Delia Owens

156. “I made a necklace with the shell you found. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

— Delia Owens

157. “For the first time since Ma and Jodie left, she breathed without pain; felt something other than the hurt. She needed this boat and that boy.”

— Delia Owens

158. “But when he reached the lagoon, he stopped under the deep canopy and watched hundreds of fireflies beckoning far into the dark reaches of the marsh. Way out yonder, where the crawdads sing.”

— Delia Owens

159. “Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive...”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

161. “The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.”

— Delia Owens

162. “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

163. “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

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

— Delia Owens

165. “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

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

— Delia Owens

167. “When her lagoon opened before them, the delicate details of every mossy branch and brilliant leaf reflected in the clear dark water. Dragonflies and snowy egrets lifted briefly at his strange boat, then resettled gracefully on silent wings.”

— Delia Owens

168. “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

169. “Autumn was coming. the evergreens might not have noticed, but the Sycamores did: they waved thousands of yellow leaves...”

— Delia Owens

170. “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

171. “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

172. “The rest of the small half-moon beach was covered in a thick layer of broken shells, a jumble of crustacean parts, and crab claws. Shells the best secret-keepers of all.”

— Delia Owens

173. “He didn’t mention how he felt sorry for her being alone, that he knew how the kids had treated her for years;.”

— Delia Owens

174. “He turned to her, still standing in the doorway. “Kya, these are wonderful, beautifully detailed. You could publish these. This could be a book – lots of books.”

— Delia Owens

175. “The only light emitted from various flashing beer signs, giving off an amber glow, like campfires licking whiskered faces.”

— Delia Owens

176. “The sun, still shy and submissive to winter, peeped in now and then between days of mean wind and bitter rain. Then one afternoon, just like that, spring elbowed her way in for good. The day warmed, and the sky shone as if polished.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

178. “When the carton was empty she didn’t think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else.”

— Delia Owens

179. “Drifting back to the predictable cycles of tadpoles and the ballet of fireflies, Kya burrowed deeper into the wordless wilderness. Nature seemed the only stone that would not slip midstream.”

— Delia Owens

180. “Here- instead of the estuaries and enormous sweeps of grass as in her marsh- clear water flowed as far as she could see through a bright and open cypress forest. Brilliant white herons and storks stood among the water lilies and floating plants so green they seemed to glow. Hunched up on cypress knees as large as easy chairs, they ate pimento-cheese sandwiches and potato chips, grinning as geese glided just below their toes.”

— Delia Owens

181. “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

182. “For miles To the other edge, And how much sky Is in one breath When time slides backward From the sand.”

— Delia Owens

183. “Kya, I’m sorry ’bout the other day. Okay? C’mon, I wanta show you the fire tower.” She said nothing, still drifting his way, knowing it was weakness. “Look, if you’ve never climbed the tower, it’s a great way to see the marsh. Follow me.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

185. “As they moved closer, she flattened herself against the oak and peered around. Five girls and four boys, a bit older than she, maybe twelve. She recognized Chase Andrews throwing.”

— Delia Owens

186. “Their squeals made Kya’s silence even louder. Their togetherness tugged at her loneliness, but she knew being labeled as marsh trash kept her behind the oak tree.”

— Delia Owens

187. “We seen Chase Andrews flat out in the swamp.”

— Delia Owens

188. “With the mussel money she bought matches, a candle, and grits. Kerosene and soap would have to wait for another croker full. It took all her might not to buy a Sugar Daddy instead of the candle.”

— Delia Owens

189. “I don’t know how to do life without grits.”

— Delia Owens

190. “All along You thought The fiery current Of your lover’s breast Pulled you to the deep. But it was my heart-tide Releasing you To float adrift With seaweed.”

— Delia Owens

191. “Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a release. And a strength.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

193. “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.”

— Delia Owens

194. “If only she could join in, belong to them. Kya knew it wasn’t so much that the herd would be incomplete without one of its deer, but that each deer would be incomplete without her herd.”

— Delia Owens

195. “Then, the hustle of getting everybody up and fed. Pa not there. He had two settings: silence and shouting. So it was just fine when he slept through, or didn’t come home at all.”

— Delia Owens

196. “Carrying one of the six copies of her new book the publishers had given her, she waited on the old reading-log. In about twenty minutes she heard the sound of Tate’s old boat chugging up the channel and stood. As he eased into view from the undergrowth, they waved and smiled softly. Both guarded. The last time he’d pulled in here, she’d hurled rocks in his face.”

— Delia Owens

197. “A Visit from Patti Love 1969.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

199. “The sun, still shy and submissive to winter, peeped in now and then between days of mean wind and bitter rain.”

— Delia Owens

200. “Kya had done the laundry plenty with Ma, so knew how to scrub clothes on the rub board under the yard spigot with bars of lye soap. Pa’s overalls were so heavy wet she couldn’t wring them out with her tiny hands, and couldn’t reach the line to hang them, so draped them sopping over the palmetto fronds at the edge of the woods.”

— Delia Owens