Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “One at a time, then ten at a time, then hundreds of geese landed only yards from where Kya and Tate had sat under the ferns. The sky emptied as the wet meadow filled until it was covered in downy snow. No fancy dining room could compare to that, and the coon balls offered more spice and flare than almond-crusted trout.”

— Delia Owens

352. “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

353. “Before Pa strung it up, the bream flopped around in the boat bottom and Kya had to watch a distant string of pelicans, study the cloud forms, anything but look into dying fish eyes staring at a world without water, wide mouth sucking worthless air. But what it cost her and what it cost that fish was worth it to have this little shred of family. Perhaps not for the fish, but still.”

— Delia Owens

354. “She would not be drawn back to someone she couldn’t trust. ‘I don’t know how to. I could never believe you again.”

— Delia Owens

355. “Clouds lazed in the folded arms of the hills, then billowed up and drifted away. Some tendrils twisted into tight spirals and traced the warmer ravines, behaving like mist tracking the dank fens of the marsh. The same game of physics playing on a different field of biology.”

— Delia Owens

356. “Aldo Leopold taught her that floodplains are living extensions of the rivers, which will claim them back any time they choose. Anyone living on a floodplain is just waiting in the river’s wings.”

— Delia Owens

357. “They sat there like that, quietly. Not remembering.”

— Delia Owens

358. “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

359. “Unfortunately gravity holds no sway on human thought.”

— Delia Owens

360. “Her heart beat wildly. Of all the ragged loves she’d known from wayward family, none had felt like this.”

— Delia Owens

361. “Mrs. Singletary’s hair was cut short, curled tight, and colored purple as an iris in sunlight.”

— Delia Owens

362. “Chase’s blue eyes were playful; he smiled easily.”

— Delia Owens

363. “Autumn was coming; the evergreens might not have noticed, but the sycamores did.”

— Delia Owens

364. “Pennies and Grits 1956.”

— Delia Owens

365. “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

366. “A dark clearing – one of her favorite places – spread cavernlike under five oaks so dense only hazy streams of sunlight filtered through the canopy, striking lush patches of trillium and white violets.”

— Delia Owens

367. “But knowing that these tendencies are in our biological blueprints might help one forgive even a failed mother.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

369. “Much older than she, eleven, maybe twelve.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

372. “That anticipation of touch.”

— Delia Owens

373. “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

374. “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

375. “Red Fibers 1969.”

— Delia Owens

376. “She insisted on keeping the kitchen as it was and the exterior unpainted, so that the dwelling, more of a cabin now, remained weathered and real.”

— Delia Owens

377. “As they climbed, the round corners of the world moved out farther and farther, the lush, rounded forests and watery marsh expanding to the very rims.”

— Delia Owens

378. “In a whisper, she asked, “Who’s who?”

— Delia Owens

379. “They had abandoned her to survive and defend herself. So here she was, by herself.”

— Delia Owens

380. “Why would Chase open this one in the.”

— Delia Owens

381. “I’ve about had it with flying,” he grumbled, switching off the plane’s systems, “It’s ninety-nine percent boring and one percent sheer terror.”

— Delia Owens

382. “Not knowing how to count the exact amount, she laid down the whole dollar.”

— Delia Owens

383. “For a scavenger, patience is the key to the pantry.”

— Delia Owens

384. “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

385. “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

386. “Oh, by the way,” Chase said. “I have to drive over to Asheville in a few days to buy goods for the.”

— Delia Owens

387. “The sheriff was silent a few seconds. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old and soft at the grand ol’ age of fifty-one. But running down a woman with hounds for questioning doesn’t seem right. It’s fine for escaped convicts, people already convicted of some crime. But, like everybody else, she’s innocent until proven guilty, and I can’t see setting hounds on a female suspect. Maybe as a last resort, but not yet.”

— Delia Owens

388. “A hollowness that urgently needed filling pulsed through her.”

— Delia Owens

389. “For months Ma was mute, didn’t speak one word. She stayed in her old room in her parents’ home, barely eating. Of course, they had doctors come out, but no one could help her. Ma’s father contacted the sheriff in Barkley Cove to ask if Ma’s children were all right, but his office said they didn’t even try to keep track of the marsh people.”

— Delia Owens

390. “Imagination grows in the lonliest of soils.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

393. “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

394. “She cooked a Southern supper as Ma would have: black-eyed peas with red onions, fried ham, cornbread with cracklin’, butter beans cooked in butter and milk. Blackberry cobbler with hard cream with some bourbon Jodie brought.”

— Delia Owens

395. “Failure was an option we simply could not afford. We had invested all our savings -our dreams and our pride- in this venture. There was no reason to turn around; there was nothing to go back to.”

— Delia Owens

396. “And later, just as she forgot their ages, she couldn’t remember their real names, only that they were called Missy, Murph, and Mandy.”

— Delia Owens

397. “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

398. “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

399. “And yet here was an extra spark plug, to be set aside until needed. A surplus. Her heart filled up.”

— Delia Owens

400. “Happy birthday, Kya,” he said. “You’re fifteen.”

— Delia Owens