72 Quotes by Delia Owens

Carefully she took the paper off to find a secondhand Webster's dictionary. "Oh, Tate, thank you.""Look inside," he said. Tucked in the P section was a pelican feather, forget-me-not blossoms pressed between two pages of the Fs, a dried mushroom under M. So many treasures were stashed among the pages, the book would not completely close.

Now in her hands, the final copy- every brushstroke, every carefully thought-out color, every word of the natural histories, printed in a book. There were also drawings of the creatures who live inside- how they eat, how they move, how they mate- because people forget about creatures who live in shells.She touched the pages and remembered each shell and the story of finding it, where it lay on the beach, the season, the sunrise. A family album.

Imagination grows in the loneliest of soils.

Imagination grows in the lonliest of soils

And just at that second, the wind picked up, and thousands upon thousands of yellow sycamore leaves broke from their life support and streamed across the sky. Autumn leaves don't fall; they fly. They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar.

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.

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.

Here- instead of the estuaries and enormous sweeps of grass as in her marsh- clear water flowed as far as she could see through a bright and open cypress forest. Brilliant white herons and storks stood among the water lilies and floating plants so green they seemed to glow. Hunched up on cypress knees as large as easy chairs, they ate pimento-cheese sandwiches and potato chips, grinning as geese glided just below their toes.

I've always loved you. Even as a child- in a time I don't remember- I already loved you.