Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

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

— Delia Owens

253. “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

254. “Jodie, the brother closest to Kya, but still seven years older, stepped from the house and stood behind her. He had her same dark eyes and black.”

— Delia Owens

255. “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

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

— Delia Owens

257. “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

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

— Delia Owens

259. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

262. “Just as she had figured out most things, Kya figured out how to become a woman on her own.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

264. “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

265. “But I knew this. I’ve known a long time that people don’t stay.”

— Delia Owens

266. “A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth.”

— Delia Owens

267. “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

268. “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

269. “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

270. “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

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

— Delia Owens

272. “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

273. “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

274. “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

275. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

278. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

281. “Nodding at everyone, there not being one person they didn’t know, they sat at a corner table. Both ordered the special: chicken-fried steak, mash and gravy, turnips, and coleslaw. Biscuits. Pecan pie with ice cream. At the next table, a family of four joined hands and lowered their heads as the father said a blessing out loud. At “Amen” they kissed the air, squeezed hands, and passed the cornbread.”

— Delia Owens

282. “Mostly she looked for the fishing boy.”

— Delia Owens

283. “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

284. “Sloppy and confused waves jerked the bow sideways, pulling against the tiller. As always, the ocean seemed angrier than the marsh. Deeper, it had more to say.”

— Delia Owens

285. “It didn’t fit that anyone who liked birds would be mean.”

— Delia Owens

286. “She held it against her heart. Where else would one need a compass more than in this place?”

— Delia Owens

287. “She waited the next day. Each hour warmed until noon, blistered after midday, throbbed past sunset. Later, the moon threw hope across the water, but that died, too. Another sunrise, another white-hot noon. Sunset again. All hope gone to neutral.”

— Delia Owens

288. “For a while she was so stiff she couldn’t swallow, but on cue, the familiar songs of tree frogs and katydids filled the night. More comforting than three blind mice with a carving knife. The darkness held an odor of sweetness, the earthy breath of frogs and salamanders who’d made it through one more stinky-hot day. The marsh snuggled in closer with a low fog, and she slept.”

— Delia Owens

289. “Tucked in the P section was a pelican feather, forget-me-not blossoms pressed between two pages of the Fs, a dried mushroom under M. So many treasures were stashed among the pages, the book would not completely close.”

— Delia Owens

290. “Miss Kya. I didn’t jus’ fall off the turnip truck.”

— Delia Owens

291. “Kya turned quickly to speed away but, against a strong pull, turned back and searched for him. She knew that no part of this yearning made sense. Illogical behavior to fill an emptiness would not fulfill much more. How much do you trade to defeat lonesomeness?”

— Delia Owens

292. “A surplus. Her heart filled up. The same feeling as having a full tank of gas or seeing the sunset under a paint-brushed sky.”

— Delia Owens

293. “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

294. “Downstream a herd of five female deer ignored her and wandered along the water’s edge nibbling leaves. 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. p272.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

296. “Listless, she wondered what she had done to send everyone away.”

— Delia Owens

297. “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

298. “Hiya, Miss Kya. Got somebody here for ya to meet. This here’s ma wife, Mabel.”

— Delia Owens

299. “The shack stood silent against the early stir of blackbird wings, as an earnest winter fog formed along the ground, bunching up against the walls like large wisps of cotton.”

— Delia Owens

300. “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