Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Delia Owens

303. “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

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

— Delia Owens

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Delia Owens

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

313. “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

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

— Delia Owens

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “Chase right on the deck of his fancy ski boat. There’s.”

— Delia Owens

319. “A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.”

— Delia Owens

320. “Drugged by despair and heat, she tossed in clothes and sheets damp from sweat, her skin sticky. She sent her toes on missions to scout for cool spots between the sheets, but they found none.”

— Delia Owens

321. “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

322. “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.”

— Delia Owens

323. “Finally, she bent over and, heaving, fell to her knees. Cussing worn-out words. As long as she ranted, sobs couldn’t surface. But nothing could stop the burning shame and sharp sadness. A simple hope of being with someone, of actually being wanted, of being touched, had drawn her in. But these hurried groping hands were only a taking, not a sharing or giving.”

— Delia Owens

324. “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

325. “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

326. “Boys, not men. She sat straight up. There was no back door.”

— Delia Owens

327. “But now, with permission finally granted, an urgency gripped him and he seemed to bypass her needs and push his way. She cried out against a sharp tearing, thinking something was wrong.”

— Delia Owens

328. “Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates.”

— Delia Owens

329. “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

330. “Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.”

— Delia Owens

331. “Still, she knew by the way he spoke that Pa had slugged his face. “I hafta go, Kya. Can’t live here no longer.”

— Delia Owens

332. “Jodie, showing maturity far beyond his father’s, deadpanned, “Another one’ll just move in, and I always reckoned it’s better the skunk ya know than the skunk ya don’t know.”

— Delia Owens

333. “She walked to the pool twice a day for a week, living on saltines and Crisco, and Pa never came home the whole time. By the eighth day she could circle her foot without stiffness and the pain had retreated to the surface. She danced a little jig, favoring her foot, squealing, “I did it, I did it!” The next morning, she headed for the beach to find more pirates. “First thing I’m gonna do is boss my crew to pick up all them nails.”

— Delia Owens

334. “Jim Bo Sweeny darted from flipping crab cakes on the griddle to stirring a pot of creamed corn on the burner to poking chicken thighs.”

— Delia Owens

335. “He couldn’t come close to sorting it out himself, but he’d never been hit by a stronger wave. A power of emotions as painful as pleasurable.”

— Delia Owens

336. “She had no notion how to talk to kids, certainly not to a teacher, but she wanted to learn to read and what came after twenty-nine.”

— Delia Owens

337. “Child to child. Eye to eye. We grew as one, sharing souls. Wing by wing, leaf by leaf you left this world, you died before the child. My friend, the Wild.”

— Delia Owens

338. “He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was she had.”

— Delia Owens

339. “No fancy dining room could compare to that, and the coon balls offered more spice and flare than almond-crusted trout.”

— Delia Owens

340. “But this was too abrupt – picnic, then mate the.”

— Delia Owens

341. “She knew it wasn’t Chase she mourned, but a.”

— Delia Owens

342. “Joe held up a red wool hat. “Where’d you find that?” “Right here, hangin’ on this row of hooks with these coats, other hats, and stuff.”

— Delia Owens

343. “Kya, I want you more than anything. I want you forever. But you’re too young. You’re only fifteen.”

— Delia Owens

344. “But he had noticed her. Had held her eyes. Her breath froze as a heat flowed through her. She tracked them, mostly him, down to the shore. Her mind looking one way, her desire the other. Her body watched Chase Andrews, not her heart.”

— Delia Owens

345. “I brought them in case you were still here. Rosemary sent these to me. She said that for years, day and night, Ma painted us.”

— Delia Owens

346. “Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn’t recall their ages.”

— Delia Owens

347. “Maybe Ma was never coming home. Maybe some dreams should just fade away.”

— Delia Owens

348. “At the bottom of the carton was a note.”

— Delia Owens

349. “Now at last Kya could label all her precious specimens. She took each feather, insect, shell, or.”

— Delia Owens

350. “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