“Where the Crawdads Sing” is an emotional and heartwarming novel by Delia Owens.
Throughout the novel, Owens shares beautiful and thought-provoking quotes that readers can’t help but love.
In this blog post, we will explore some of the most memorable quotes from the novel and provide the page numbers so you can easily find them.
Where The Crawdads Sing Quotes With Page Numbers Part 1
“The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 1, Page 8
“When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 1, Page 8
“Imagination grows in the lonliest of soils”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 4, Page 32
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 4, Page 34
“Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 4, Page 34
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 6, Page 48
“Sand keeps secrets better than mud.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 10, Page 71, and Chapter 13, Page 86
“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.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Character: Ma), Chapter 15, Page 96
“That’s what sisters and girlfriends are all about. Sticking together even in the mud, ’specially in mud.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Character: Ma), Chapter 15, Page 96
“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Character: Ma), Chapter 16, Page 103
“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, (Character: Kya Clark), Chapter 16, Page 103
“Time ensures children never know their parents young.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 16, Page 106
“In nature—out yonder where the crawdads sing—these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation. And on and on. It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Characters: Ma and Kya), Chapter 17, Page 111
“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, (Characters: Ma and Kya), Chapter 17, Page 111
“Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Characters: Ma and Kya), Chapter 17, Page 111
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 17, Page 124
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 18, Page 131
“She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it’s not in a jar.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 20, Page 142
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 20, Pages 142-143
“Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 20, Page 143
“Needing people ended in hurt.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 21, Page 145
Where the Crawdads Sing Part 2 Quotes
“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, (Character: Mabel), Chapter 22, Page 150
“Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 22, Page 151
“Loneliness has a compass of its own.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 22, Page 151
“Love must be free to wander, To land upon its chosen shore And breathe.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Kya recalling a poem), Chapter 22, Page 154
“She’d given love a chance; now she wanted simply to fill the empty spaces. Ease the loneliness while walling off her heart.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 23, Page 159
“A simple hope of being with someone, of actually being wanted, of being touched, had drawn her in. But these hurried groping hands were only a taking, not a sharing or giving.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 23, Page 162
“How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 24, Page 163
“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, (The narrator about Kya), Chapter 26, Page 177
“Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a release. And a strength.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 26, Page 181
“Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. “Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,” Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Characters: The narrator and Ma), Chapter 26, Page 183
“Unworthy boys make a lot of noise”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Character: Ma), Chapter 26, Page 183
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 26, Page 186
“Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 27, Page 198
“But I knew this. I’ve known a long time that people don’t stay.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Character: Kya Clark), Chapter 30, Page 212
“Perhaps love is best left as a fallow field.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 30, Page 212
“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, (Character: Kya Clark reciting a Amanda Hamilton poem), Chapter 30, Page 213
“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 30, Page 215
“Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was…”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 33, Pages 232-233
“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, (Character: Kya), Chapter 33, Page 237
“Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive…”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 33, Page 238
“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, (Character: Ma), Chapter 33, Page 242
“Sunsets are never simple.
Twilight is refracted and reflected But never true.
Eventide is a disguise
Covering tracks,
Covering lies.
“We don’t care
That dusk deceives.
We see brilliant colors,
And never learn
The sun has dropped
Beneath the earth
By the time we see the burn.
“Sunsets are in disguise,
Covering truths, covering lies.
“A.H.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (Kya reciting a Amanda Hamilton poem), Chapter 35, Page 249
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 41, Page 274
“Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 44, Page 285
“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, (Character: Kya), Chapter 48, Page 312
“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, (Character: Kya), Chapter 55, Page 352
“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, (The narrator), Chapter 57, Page 363
“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, (Character: The narrator about Kya), Chapter 57, Page 363
“Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core. Tate’s devotion eventually convinced her that human love is more than the bizarre mating competitions of the marsh creatures. But life also taught her than ancient genes for survival still persist in undesirable forms among the twists and turns of man’s genetic code. For Kya it was enough to be part of this natural sequence as sure as the tides. Kya was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.”
~Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, (The narrator), Chapter 57, Page 363
if anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would page number
“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would” quote is on page 215, chapter 30.