Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Kya, I want you more than anything. I want you forever. But you’re too young. You’re only fifteen.”

— Delia Owens

252. “Suddenly she shrieks as the power rushes beneath her, fondles her thighs, between her legs, flows along her back, swirling under her head, pulling her hair in inky strands.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

254. “Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.”

— Delia Owens

255. “And just at that second, the wind picked up, and thousands upon thousands of yellow sycamore leaves broke from their life support and streamed across the sky. Autumn leaves don’t fall; they fly. They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar.”

— Delia Owens

256. “Tate. The golden-haired boy in the boat, guiding her home before a storm, gifting her feathers on a weathered stump, teaching her to read; the teenager steering her through her first cycle as a woman and arousing her first sexual desires as a female; the young scientist encouraging her to publish her books.”

— Delia Owens

257. “Jodie felt the lonely life hanging in her kitchen. It was there in the tiny supply of onions in the vegetable basket, the single plate drying in the rack, the cornbread wrapped carefully in a tea towel, the way an old widow might do it.”

— Delia Owens

258. “Once again Tate was nudging her to care for herself, not just offering to care for her. It seemed that all her life, he had been there. Then gone.”

— Delia Owens

259. “Kya sat frozen, her arms slightly raised, so as not to interfere with his maneuvering. Finally, he settled as though he had nested here every night of his life. He looked at her. 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

260. “Maria begged him to stop drinking, to show enthusiasm for his job so that her father would promote him. But the babies started coming and the drinking never stopped.”

— Delia Owens

261. “Kya sprinted to the spot she knew would bare the road; surely Ma would wave from there, but she arrived only in time to glimpse the blue case – the color so wrong for the woods – as it disappeared. A heaviness, thick as black-cotton mud, pushed her chest as she returned to the steps to wait.”

— Delia Owens

262. “When all her shelves were empty, she finally motored to Jumpin’s for supplies but didn’t chat with him as usual. Did her business and left him standing, staring after her. Needing people ended in hurt.”

— Delia Owens

263. “They sipped until the sun, as golden as syrupy as the bourbon, slipped into the sea.”

— Delia Owens

264. “Dreams of escape – even through death – always lift toward the light. The dangling, shiny prize of peace just out of grasp until finally her body descends to the bottom and settles in murky quiet. Safe.”

— Delia Owens

265. “After Ma left, over the next few weeks, Kya’s oldest brother and two sisters drifted away too, as if by example. They had endured Pa’s red-faced rages, which started as shouts, then escalated into fist-slugs, or backhanded punches, until one by one, they disappeared.”

— Delia Owens

266. “He showed her more slides. She whispered, “It’s like never having seen the stars, then suddenly seeing them.”

— Delia Owens

267. “Her pocket brought a tail feather from an.”

— Delia Owens

268. “Even Jodie had said she should give Tate another chance. But every time she thought of him or saw him, her heart jumped from the old love to the pain of abandonment. She wished it would settle on one side or the other.”

— Delia Owens

269. “A areia guarda segredos melhor do que a lama.”

— Delia Owens

270. “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

271. “Kya, it’s gotten cooler, don’t you want a jacket or something?” “No. I’m fine.” “Here, at least take my cap,” and he tossed a red ski cap toward her. She caught it and slung it back to him. He threw it again, farther, and she jogged across the sandbar, leaned low and scooped it up.”

— Delia Owens

272. “The mussel money turned out to be more reliable than the Monday money ever had, and she usually managed to beat out other pickers.”

— Delia Owens

273. “Talking out loud, head low, he asked his dad to forgive him for spending so much time away, and he knew Scupper did. 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. Tate sat there quite awhile, one hand on his mother, the other on his father.”

— Delia Owens

274. “Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.”

— Delia Owens

275. “Ever since Barkley Cove had been settled in 1751, no lawman extended his jurisdiction beyond the saw grass. In the 1940s and ’50s, a few sheriffs set hounds on some mainland convicts who’d escaped into the marsh, and the office still kept dogs just in case. But Jackson mostly ignored crimes committed in the swamp. Why interrupt rats killing rats?”

— Delia Owens

276. “Look here, Miss Kya,” Mabel said, as she lifted a peach-colored dress with a layer of chiffon over the flowered skirt, the most beautiful piece of clothing Kya had ever seen, prettier than Ma’s sundress. “This dress is fit for a princess like you.”

— Delia Owens

277. “When the soldiers tumbled back into the trench, dragging the sergeant, they assumed Jake had been hit while helping the others rescue their comrade. He was declared a hero. No one would ever know. Except Jake.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

279. “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

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

— Delia Owens

281. “Two tours in ‘Nam. I’m staying in the army for a few more months. They’ve been good to me. Paid for my college degree – mechanical engineering, Georgia Tech. Least I can do is stay in a while.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

283. “Kya watched him gimp along the path, left leg swinging to the side, then forward. Her fingers knotted. Maybe they were all going to leave her, one by one down this lane. When he reached the road and unexpectedly looked back, she threw her hand up and waved hard. A shot to keep him tethered. Pa lifted an arm in a quick, dismissive salutation. But it was something. It was more than Ma had done.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

285. “Kya never went back to school a day in her life.”

— Delia Owens

286. “IN EARLY SEPTEMBER of that fishing summer, on one afternoon that paled with heat, Kya walked to the mailbox at the end of the lane. Leafing through the grocery ads, she stopped dead when she saw a blue envelope addressed in Ma’s neat hand.”

— Delia Owens

287. “You can’t eat grits without salt.”

— Delia Owens

288. “What he’d learned right after DNA, isotopes, and protozoans was that he couldn’t breathe without her.”

— Delia Owens

289. “The calmness of the boy. She’d never known anybody to speak or move so steady. So sure and easy. Just being near him, and not even that close, had eased her tightness. 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

290. “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

291. “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

292. “She stared, not knowing how to see this. Would she have to go somewhere, meet people? Tate didn’t miss the questions in her eyes.”

— Delia Owens

293. “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

294. “Pa still disappeared some, not coming back for several days, but not as often as before. And when he did show up, he didn’t collapse in a stupor but ate a meal and talked some. One night they played gin rummy, he guffawing when she won, and she giggling with her hands over her mouth like a regular girl.”

— Delia Owens

295. “Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feahers; or by the fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths; the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world, She grew with them – the trunk of the vine – alone, but holding all the wonders together.”

— Delia Owens

296. “She knew Pa was the reason they all left; what she wondered was why no one took her with them. She’d thought of leaving too, but had nowhere to go and no bus money.”

— Delia Owens

297. “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

298. “As they crowded around her, she felt their featers brushing her arms and thighs, and threw her head back, smiling with them. Even as tears streamed her cheeks.”

— Delia Owens

299. “If we had taken her in as one of our own – I think that is what she would be today.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens