Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

404. “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

405. “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

406. “But the process of being killed by another’s hand, planned out and set to schedule, was so unthinkable it stopped her breath.”

— Delia Owens

407. “Even male birds woo the females for a while, flashing brilliant feathers, building bowers, staging magnificent dances and love songs. Yes, Chase had laid out a banquet, but she was worth more than fried chicken. And “Dixie” didn’t count as a love song.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

409. “Pennies and Grits 1956.”

— Delia Owens

410. “But, being only seven and a girl, she’d never taken the boat out by herself.”

— Delia Owens

411. “Her carefully labeled samples, more than fifty years’ worth, was the longest-running, most complete collection of its kind. She had requested that it be donated to Archbald Lab, and someday he would do so, but parting with it now was unthinkable.”

— Delia Owens

412. “She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good.”

— Delia Owens

413. “Yeah, we all got magnolia mouth, being from the North Carolina sticks, but we have to try.”

— Delia Owens

414. “It’s a two-day job, so we’ll have to stay overnight.”

— Delia Owens

415. “Talvez alguns sonhos devessem simplesmente passar.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

418. “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

419. “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

420. “A small covey gathered around Chase’s parents. Patti Love wept. Sarah Singletary scowled like everybody else but discovered that she was greatly relieved. Miss Pansy hoped no one saw her jaw relax. A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.”

— Delia Owens

421. “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

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

— Delia Owens

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Delia Owens

426. “The royalty checks would come in every six months, they said, and might be several thousand dollars each.”

— Delia Owens

427. “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

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

— Delia Owens

429. “So she planned up something that lots of people would see her do. Making a great alibi right in front of all those folks on Main Street. Brilliant.”

— Delia Owens

430. “Had he not been so obsessed with his own heart, perhaps he would have noticed his father’s was failing.”

— Delia Owens

431. “She sent her toes on missions to scout for cool spots between the sheets, but they found none.”

— Delia Owens

432. “Then swore louder and meaner than the wind.”

— Delia Owens

433. “Before moving, Vern stared for a long minute at Chase, as though he had overlooked something. As a doctor, he should fix this. Heavy swamp air stood.”

— Delia Owens

434. “Kya leaned over gently, as if to kiss a baby. The microscope’s light reflected in her dark pupils, and she drew in a breath as a Mardi Gras of costumed players pirouetted and careened into view. Unimaginable headdresses adorned astonishing bodies so eager for more life, they frolicked as though caught in a circus tent, not a single bead of water.”

— Delia Owens

435. “Pa had always bought the kerosene and filled the lamp, so she hadn’t thought much about it. Until it was dark.”

— Delia Owens

436. “She’d always found the muscle and heart to pull herself from the mire, to take the next step, no matter how shaky. But where had all that grit brought her?”

— Delia Owens

437. “She kept on buying gas and supplies from him but never accepted a handout from them again. And each time she came to his wharf, she saw her book propped up in the tiny window for all to see. As a father would have shown it.”

— Delia Owens

438. “But when the Depression deepened, the bank auctioned the land out from under the Clarks’ feet, and his father took Jake from school.”

— Delia Owens

439. “Back home, thinking she knew how to fix grits, she threw them into boiling water like Ma had done, but they lumped up all together in one big ball that burned on the bottom and stayed raw in the middle. So rubbery she could only eat a few bites, so she searched the garden again and found a few more turnip greens between the goldenrod. Then boiled them up and ate them all, slurping down the pot likker.”

— Delia Owens

440. “WEEK LATER, Kya heard Tate’s boat whirring.”

— Delia Owens

441. “July 4 1961 Dressed in the now too-short peach chiffon, Kya walked barefoot to the lagoon on July 4 and sat on the reading-log.”

— Delia Owens

442. “In the mountains, she noticed, the time of sunset depended on where you stood on the hill.”

— Delia Owens

443. “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

444. “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

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

— Delia Owens

446. “But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness.”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

449. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

— Delia Owens

450. “Ma had painted the estuaries and sunsets in oils and watercolors so rich they seemed peeled from the earth. She had brought some art supplies with her and could buy bits and pieces at Kress’s Five and Dime. Sometimes Ma had let Kya paint her own pictures on brown paper bags from the Piggly Wiggly.”

— Delia Owens