Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Pa pointed to a crumpled dollar and loose coins on the kitchen table. “This here’ll get ya food fer the week. Thar ain’t no such thang as handouts,” he said. “Ever’thang cost sump’m, and fer the money ya gotta keep the house up, stove wood c’lected, and warsh the laundree.”

— Delia Owens

252. “Finally, after a lifetime, she admitted it was the chance of seeing Tate, the hope of rounding a creek bend and watching him through reeds, that had pulled her into the marsh every day of her life since she was seven.”

— Delia Owens

253. “Hello, Mister Jake. How ya doin’?” “Well, Ah woke up on the right side of dirt,” Pa answered. Jumpin’ laughed as if he’d never heard the worn-out phrase.”

— Delia Owens

254. “Gently she touched his head, then scratched his neck. A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.”

— Delia Owens

255. “Kya didn’t stop or they would bolt, a lesson she’d learned from watching wild turkeys: if you act like a predator, they act like prey. Just ignore them, keep going slowly.”

— Delia Owens

256. “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.”

— Delia Owens

257. “When they hit the shadows, they vanished. Without the sun they were nothing.”

— Delia Owens

258. “Don’t go on thinking poetry’s just for sissies. There’s mushy love poems, for sure, but there’s also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it-they make ya feel something.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

260. “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

261. “She fished for eight hours straight, then soaked her catch of twenty in saltwater brine through the night. At daybreak she lined them up on the shelves of Pa’s old smokehouse.”

— Delia Owens

262. “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.”

— Delia Owens

263. “Inside the Piggly Wiggly, Kya studied the selection of grits and chose a one-pound bag of coarse ground yellow because a red tag hung from the top – a special of the week. Like Ma taught her.”

— Delia Owens

264. “And even though she couldn’t write, Kya had found a way to label her specimens. Her talent had matured and now she could draw, paint, and sketch anything. Using chalks or watercolors from the Five and Dime, she sketched the birds, insects, or shells on grocery bags and attached them to her samples.”

— Delia Owens

265. “Don’t go thinking poetry’s just for sissies. There’s mushy love poems, for sure, but there’s also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it – they make ya feel something.” His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”

— Delia Owens

266. “Some of the seeds lie dormant in the desiccated earth for decades, waiting, and when the water finally comes home again, they burst through the sol, unfolding their faces. Wonders and real-life knowledge she would’ve never learned in school. Truths everyone should know, yet somehow, even though they lay exposed all around, seemed to lie in secret like the seeds.”

— Delia Owens

267. “She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.”

— Delia Owens

268. “Finally, after a lifetime, she admitted it was the chance of seeing Tate, the hope of rounding a creek bend and watching him through reeds, that had pulled her into the marsh every day of her life since she was seven. She knew his favorite lagoons and paths through difficult quagmires; always following him at a safe distance.”

— Delia Owens

269. “Kya touched the words as if they were a message, as though Ma had underlined them specifically so her daughter would read them someday by this dim kerosene flame and understand. It wasn’t much, not a handwritten note tucked in the back of a sock drawer, but it was something. She sensed that the words clinched a powerful meaning, but she couldn’t shake it free. If she ever became a poet, she’d make the message clear.”

— Delia Owens

270. “My mother and little sister died in a car wreck over in Asheville. My sister’s name was Carianne.”

— Delia Owens

271. “Thought ya could use that fer yo’ feathers, bird nests, and all that other stuff ya c’lect.” “Oh,” Kya said. “Oh, thank ya.” But he was already out the porch door. She picked up the frayed knapsack, made of canvas tough enough for a lifetime and covered in small pockets and secret compartments. Heavy-duty zips. She stared out the window. He had never given her anything.”

— Delia Owens

272. “I’m so sorry. I am, but, Kya, it’s not just guys who are unfaithful. I’ve been duped, dropped, run over a few times myself. Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections. Look at us; you and I have each other now, and just think, if I have kids and you have kids, well, that’s a whole new string of connections. And on it goes. Kya, if you love Tate, take a chance.”

— Delia Owens

273. “Just forget it. No god’s gonna come to this garden.”

— Delia Owens

274. “Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. 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

275. “His eyes were the same as they had been. Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there.”

— Delia Owens

276. “Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,” Ma had said.”

— Delia Owens

277. “Tate said long words were simply little ones strung together – so she wasn’t afraid of them, went straight to learning Pleistocene along with sat.”

— Delia Owens

278. “Each hour warmed until noon, blistered after midday, throbbed past sunset. Later, the moon threw hope across the water, but that died, too.”

— Delia Owens

279. “Ma had said women need one another more than they need men.”

— Delia Owens

280. “Rosemary said Ma never made friends, never dined with the family or interacted with anybody. She allowed herself no life, no pleasure.”

— Delia Owens

281. “At the chirp of a chipmunk she whirled around, listened keenly to the caws of crows – a language before words were, when communication was simple and clear.”

— Delia Owens

282. “Before Pa strung it up, the bream flopped around in the boat bottom and Kya had to watch a distant string of pelicans, study the cloud forms, anything but look into dying fish eyes staring at a world without water, wide mouth sucking worthless air. But what it cost her and what it cost that fish was worth it to have this little shred of family. Perhaps not for the fish, but still.”

— Delia Owens

283. “Pa was throwing Ma’s paintings, dresses, and books onto the flames.”

— Delia Owens

284. “Yep, heard us coming. She can probably hear a rabbit sleeping.”

— Delia Owens

285. “The elements had created a brief and shifting smile of sand, angled just so. The next tide, the next current would design another sandbar, and another, but never this one. Not the one who caught her. The one who told her a thing or two.”

— Delia Owens

286. “Never said I could be completely sure it was her. But I’m pretty – ” “That will be all, Mr. Miller. Thank you.” Judge Sims asked, “Redirect, Eric?” From his seat, Eric asked, “Hal, you testified that.”

— Delia Owens

287. “Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone.”

— Delia Owens

288. “He offered up his famous specialty – grilled flounder stuffed with shrimp served on pimento-cheese grits – only a few times a year.”

— Delia Owens

289. “Lui aveva ancora gli stessi occhi; le facce cambiano, con gli eventi della vita, ma gli occhi rimangono una finestra sul passato...”

— Delia Owens

290. “Thought ya could use that fer yo’ feathers, bird nests, and all that other stuff ya c’lect.”

— Delia Owens

291. “A Boat and a Boy 1952.”

— Delia Owens

292. “Just before he stepped into the trees, she finally turned and watched him walk away. “This little piggy stayed home,” she said to the waves.”

— Delia Owens

293. “Looks like it’ll be ’bout eight hundr’d dollars total – put the land free and clear.” Kya walked out of the courthouse with a full deed in her name for three hundred ten acres of lush lagoons, sparkling marsh, oak forests, and a long private beach on the North Carolina coastline.”

— Delia Owens

294. “As always, the ocean seemed angrier than the marsh. Deeper, it had more to say.”

— Delia Owens

295. “Aldo Leopold taught her that floodplains are living extensions of the rivers, which will claim them back any time they choose. Anyone living on a floodplain is just waiting in the river’s wings.”

— Delia Owens

296. “He leaned slightly forward, as if to hug her, but the hardened rinds of her heart held her back.”

— Delia Owens

297. “Well, we better hide way out there where the crawdads sing.”

— Delia Owens

298. “They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar.”

— Delia Owens

299. “Uncertainty lingered, but the more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed the boy meant harm. It didn’t fit that anyone who liked birds would be mean.”

— Delia Owens

300. “A few weeks later, watching pelicans float and feed in the sea, her boat riding up and down waves, Kya’s stomach suddenly cramped up. She’d never been seasick, and this felt different from any pain she’d ever had.”

— Delia Owens