Debbie Phillips

“The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble, from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“How did you, like, go on?” He looks down at her and swallows hard. “I mean, he was here one day and gone the next. How do you recover from something like that?” Tova hesitates. “You don’t recover. Not all the way. But you do move on. You have to.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked though with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Smart cookie. I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine. What a preposterous thing to say.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures