Delia Owens Quotes

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.

A clutch of women's the most tender, most tough place on Earth.

She feels the pulse of life, he thought, because there are no layers between her and her planet.

Autumn was coming. the evergreens might not have noticed, but the Sycamores did: they waved thousands of yellow leaves..

His eyes were the same as they had been. Faces change with life's toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there.

She would not be drawn back to someone she couldn't trust. 'I don't know how to. I could never believe you again.

Tate said long words were simply little ones strung together--so she wasn't afraid of them, went straight to learning Pleistocene along with sat.

Kya was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.

She waited the next day. Each hour warmed until noon, blistered after midday, throbbed past sunset. Later, the moon threw hope across the water, but that died, too. Another sunrise, another white-hot noon. Sunset again. All hope gone to neutral.

Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive...

Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feahers; or by the fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other's strengths; the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world, She grew with them--the trunk of the vine--alone, but holding all the wonders together.

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.

I don't know how to do life without grits.

...judgement had no place here. Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the participants. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick & the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds.

The Barkley Cove graveyard trailed off under tunnels of dark oaks. Spanish moss hung in long curtains, creating cavelike sanctuaries for old tombstones - the remains of a family here, a loner there, in no order at all. Fingers of gnarled roots had torn and twisted gravestones into hunched and nameless forms. Markers of death all weathered into nubbins by elements of life. In the distance, the sea and sky sang too bright for this serious ground.

It seemed to Kya that when Chase played these melancholy tunes was when he most had a soul.

Faces change with life's toll, but eyes remain a window to what was...

The shack took on a different light, as though more windows had opened up. She stood back and stared at them--a miracle to have some of Ma's paintings on the walls.

She knew it wasn't Chase she mourned, but a life defined by rejections. As the sky and clouds struggled overhead, she said out loud, "I have to do life alone. But I knew this. I've known a long time that people don't stay.

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.

For a scavenger, patience is the key to the pantry.

She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it's not in a jar.

They sipped until the sun, as golden as syrupy as the bourbon, slipped into the sea.

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.

Don't go on thinking poetry's just for sissies. There's mushy love poems, for sure, but there's also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it-they make ya feel something

Loneliness has a compass of its own.

Sand keeps secrets better than mud.

Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya's shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn't know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that 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.

Perhaps love is best left as a fallow field.

I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.

You can't get hurt when you love someone from the other side of an estuary. All the years she rejected him, she survived because he was somewhere in the marsh, waiting. But now perhaps he would no longer be there.

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.

Just like their whiskey, the marsh dwellers bootlegged their own laws - not like those burned onto stone tablets or inscribed on documents, but deeper ones, stamped in their genes.

If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.

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?

Imagination grows in the lonliest of soils

You all listen now, this is a real lesson in life. Yes, we got stuck, but what'd we girls do? We made it fun, we laughed. That's what sisters and girlfriends are all about. Sticking together even in the mud, 'specially in mud.

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.

Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.

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?