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Quote by Delia Owens

“In the winter of 1968, Kya sat at her kitchen table one morning, sweeping orange and pink watercolors across paper, creating the plump form of a mushroom. She had finished her book on seabirds and now worked on a guide to mushrooms. Already had plans for another on butterflies and moths. Black-eyed peas, red onions, and salt ham boiled in the old dented pot on the woodstove, which she still preferred to the new range. Especially in winter.”

Quote by Delia Owens

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Where the Crawdads Sing

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Delia Owens

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“There are times in life---sometimes, not always---when the water on paper drips with the color of just the perfect hue, until the effect is something so ethereal that the artist knows it must simply be experienced because she can never produce it again. And the color shifts over time, shifts still over sunlight, until the watercolors fade completely back into the paper itself, and all that's left is the memory.”

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”

“Many, many others have promised to others what you are promising now to me. None has ever kept his word. This is a city of broken promises. I know it. I was born here. It may be that you will try to keep your promise. If it still pleases you to keep me here, I am sure you will. But this you must know. Though I might dearly love to, I would be a fool if I believed you. In Macao, we know this, that when the time comes it is always otherwise. Whatever words may have been said, whatever promises made, when an Englishman goes, it is alone.”