- Tom Milton: Listen. I know you have a world of reasons to hate these people...
- Kya Clark: No, I never hated them. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. You want me to beg for my life? I don't have it in me. I won't. I will not offer myself up. They can make their decision. But they're not deciding anything about me. It's them. They're judging themselves.
- [last lines]
- Kya Clark: [narrating] It has always been enough to be part of the natural sequence of things. Sure as the tides, nature as my guide. The marsh knows all about death, and doesn't necessarily define it as tragedy - certainly not a sin. It understands that every creature does what it must to survive. And that sometimes, for prey to live, it's predator must die.
- Kya Clark: I am in the marsh now. I am the feather of an egret. I am every shell washed upon the shore. I am a firefly. You'll see hundreds beckoning far into the dark reaches of the marsh. And that's where you will always find me, where the crawdads sing.
- Kya Clark: Luring him was as easy
- Kya Clark: As flashing valentines.
- Kya Clark: But like a lady firefly
- Kya Clark: They hid a secret call to die.
- Kya Clark: A final touch,
- Kya Clark: Unfinished;
- Kya Clark: The last step, a trap.
- Kya Clark: Down, down he falls,
- Kya Clark: His eyes still holding mine
- Kya Clark: Until they see another world.
- Kya Clark: I saw them change.
- Kya Clark: First a question,
- Kya Clark: Then an answer,
- Kya Clark: Finally an end.
- Kya Clark: And love itself passing
- Kya Clark: To whatever it was before it began.
- [defending herself from Chase]
- Kya Clark: Leave me alone, you bastard! You bother me again, and I'll kill you!
- Kya Clark: [narrating] Then there was the small matter of surviving. I didn't know how to do life without grits.