Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Ma had said women need one another more than they need men.”

— Delia Owens

302. “Jodie, I’m so sorry you worried about leaving me. Not once did I blame you. We were the victims, not the guilty.”

— Delia Owens

303. “There in the first row of seats in the court room, sitting with Tate, were Jumpin’ and Mabel. Folks had made a stir when they walked in with Tate and sat downstairs in the “white area.” But when the bailiff reported this to Judge Sims, still in his chambers, the judge told him to announce that anybody of any color or creed could sit anywhere they wanted in his courtroom, and if somebody didn’t like it, they were free to leave. In fact, he’d make sure they did.”

— Delia Owens

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “One night two years later, without saying good-bye, Jake left before dawn, taking with him as many fine clothes and family treasures – including his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch and his grandmother’s diamond ring – as he could carry. He hitchhiked to New Orleans and found Maria.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

310. “She needed this boat and that boy.”

— Delia Owens

311. “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

312. “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

313. “Sleep avoided her, slinking around the edges, then darting away. Her mind would plunge along deep walls of sudden slumber – an instant of bliss.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

315. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

318. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence.”

— Delia Owens

319. “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

320. “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

321. “My name’s Tate ’case ya see me again.”

— Delia Owens

322. “Oddly, the sweet, freshly turned earth smelled more like a beginning than an end.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

324. “They stopped laughing. He took her shoulders, hesitated an instant, then kissed her lips, as the leaves rained and danced around them as silently as snow.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

326. “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

327. “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

328. “Seaweed 1967 Through the winter, Chase came to Kya’s shack often, usually spending one night each weekend.”

— Delia Owens

329. “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

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

— Delia Owens

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Delia Owens

334. “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

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

— Delia Owens

336. “That anticipation of touch.”

— Delia Owens

337. “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

338. “Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

340. “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

341. “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

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

— Delia Owens

343. “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

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

— Delia Owens

345. “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

346. “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

347. “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

348. “She got by with her supplies from Jumpin’s and had more mussels than she could eat. They weren’t that bad tossed into the grits, mashed up beyond recognition. They didn’t have eyes to look at her like the fish did.”

— Delia Owens

349. “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

350. “I can live with that.” Each morning they rose at dawn and, while Tate percolated coffee, Kya fried corn fritters in Ma’s old iron skillet – blackened and dented – or stirred grits and eggs as sunrise eased over the lagoon. The heron posing one-legged in the mist. They cruised estuaries, waded waterways, and slipped through narrow streams, collecting feathers and amoebas. In the evenings, they drifted in her old boat until sunset, then swam naked in moonlight or loved in beds of cool ferns.”

— Delia Owens