Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 6 of 10

251. “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

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

256. “Earlier than usual, she got up the next morning when the tide was low, pulled on her overalls, and slipped out with a bucket, claw knife, and empty tow bags. Squatting in mud, she collected mussels along the sloughs like Ma had taught her, and in four hours of crouching and kneeling had two croker sacks full.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

258. “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

259. “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

260. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

264. “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

265. “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

266. “Ya lie down with dogs, ya get up with fleas.”

— Delia Owens

267. “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

268. “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

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

— Delia Owens

270. “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

271. “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

272. “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

273. “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

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

— Delia Owens

275. “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

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

— Delia Owens

277. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

282. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

285. “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

286. “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

287. “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

288. “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

289. “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

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

— Delia Owens

291. “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

292. “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

293. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

296. “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

297. “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

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

— Delia Owens

299. “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

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

— Delia Owens