Where the Crawdads Sing Quotes

“I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Unworthy boys make a lot of noise”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“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, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“She laughed for his sake, something she’d never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn't her fault she'd been alone. Most of what she knew, she'd learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“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, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Time ensures children never know their parents young.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Faces change with life's toll, but eyes remain a window to what was...”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Autumn leaves don’t fall; they fly. They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar. Reflecting sunlight, they swirled and sailed and fluttered on the wind drafts.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“She could read anything now, he said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything. It was up to her. “Nobody's come close to filling their brains,” he said. “We're all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“She whispered a verse by Amanda Hamilton:

You came again,
blinding my eyes
like the shimmer of sun upon the sea.
Just as I feel free
the moon casts your face upon the sill.
Each time I forget you
your eyes haunt my heart and it falls still.
And so farewell
until the next time you come,
until at last I do not see you.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Please don't talk to me about isolation. No one has to tell me how it changes a person. I have lived it. I am isolation," Kya whispered with a slight edge.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“What d'ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that." Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: "Go as far as you can --- way out yonder where the crawdads sing."
Tate said, "Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Sand keeps secrets better than mud.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Needing people ended in hurt.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“time is no more fixed than the stars. Time speeds and bends around planets and suns, is different in the mountains than in the valleys, and is part of the same fabric as space, which curves and swells as does the sea.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ’cause they’re furever. Without a vow. A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“I must let go now. Let you go. Love is too often The answer for staying. Too seldom the reason For going. I drop the line And watch you drift away. “All along You thought The fiery current Of your lover’s breast Pulled you to the deep. But it was my heart-tide Releasing you To float adrift With seaweed.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Never underrate
the heart,
Capable of deeds
The mind cannot conceive.
The heart dictates as well as feels.
How else can you explain
The path I have taken,
That you have taken
The long way through this pass?”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Jodie had taught her that the female firefly flickers the light under her tail to signal to the male that she's ready to mate. Each species of firefly has its own language of flashes. As Kya watched, some females signed dot, dot, dot, dash, flying a zigzag dance, while others flashed dash, dash, dot in a different dance pattern. The males, of course, knew the signals of their species and flew only to those females. Then, as Jodie had put it, they rubbed their bottoms together like most things did, so they could produce young.

Suddenly Kya sat up and paid attention: one of the females had changed her code. First she flashed the proper sequence of dashes and dots, attracting a male of her species, and they mated. Then she flickered a different signal, and a male of a different species flew to her. Reading her message, the second male was convinced he'd found a willing female of his own kind and hovered above her to mate. But suddenly the female firefly reached up, grabbed him with her mouth, and ate him, chewing all six legs and both wings.

Kya watched others. The females all got what they wanted – first a mate, then a meal – just by changing their signals.

Kya knew judgment had no place here. Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the players. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Loneliness has a compass of its own.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing