Top 450 Delia Owens Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “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

404. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

411. “Pennies and Grits 1956.”

— Delia Owens

412. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

415. “That anticipation of touch.”

— Delia Owens

416. “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

417. “Red Fibers 1969.”

— Delia Owens

418. “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

419. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

423. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

427. “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

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

— Delia Owens

429. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

440. “Finally she said, “What do you want now, Tate?” “If only you could, some way, forgive me.” He breathed in and waited.”

— Delia Owens

441. “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

442. “From the Marsh Girl Tate read the words, then turned away, staring.”

— Delia Owens

443. “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

444. “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

445. “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

446. “Who decides the time to die?”

— Delia Owens

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

— Delia Owens

448. “The Game 1960 The next noon, hands on her cheeks, Kya approached the stump slowly, almost in prayer. But no feather on the stump. Her lips pinched. “A’ course. I gotta leave something for him.”

— Delia Owens

449. “White Canoe 1960.”

— Delia Owens

450. “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