Kemper Donovan > Quotes

“Maybe this was, in fact, the very definition of intimacy: acting with another person the way you did when you were alone.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Decent Proposal

“My roommate in college was from Yemen, and whenever anyone said anything nice to her she'd tell them they have beautiful eyes. The idea is whatever beauty you see is actually coming from you rather than the thing itself. Like the beauty is in the perception, not the thing.”
― Kemper Donovan

“I’ve always preferred the silence of winter to the cacophony of summer—not because it’s a perfect silence, but because it makes you that much more aware of whatever sounds intrude upon it: the delicate crunch of footsteps, the odd chirp from small birds hopping along the naked branches above, the scamper of what I hoped were just squirrels and chipmunks on the forest floor.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“Dorothy’s house was in Sacobago, an upscale suburb of Portland. (That’s Sock-o-BAGE-oh, with a hard g, emphasis on the third syllable. Wouldn’t want you mispronouncing our setting the whole way through like I would have—mispronunciation being a common hazard among avid readers as opposed to avid talkers. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that “vague” is one syllable and “chaos” is two.)”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“Now that he knew what real heartbreak was, it felt not only cheap but disrespectful to fabricate such emotions, only to resolve them a mere hour or so later. - The Decent Proposal”
― Kemper Donovan

“One of the few happy outcomes of the so-called Digital Revolution is that no one is expected to answer their phone anymore.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Carney, used to say the best punishment for bad-tempered people was being stuck with themselves,”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“The alienation born of the failure to connect was the worst sort of loneliness there was, much uglier than simply lamenting a person's absence.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Decent Proposal

“My best friend and I used to play a game sometimes...we'd divide everyone we knew into two categories based on the way they related to a single qualifying factor. It was a way to make sweeping generalizations that were wildly inaccurate, but invariably amusing to pronounce. For instance, people fall into two categories, those who listen to music to 'put' them in a certain mood, and those who listen to music because they're already 'in' a certain mood.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Decent Proposal

“The truth is that spending time with highly successful people is exciting but it’s also exhausting, and for the same reason. There’s just so much stimulation, so many expectations placed on every little interaction. Also, it’s hard to feel smart when you’re not the one defining the terms—when you’ve been relegated to the sidekick role. There’s a reason Watson and Hastings come across as idiots, and Miss Marple tends to work alone.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“No one likes to talk about this too much because it’s boring, and depressing, but working closely with such people has taught me that hard work is a necessary—though by no means sufficient—element of success. There are plenty of people who work their tails off and don’t achieve their dreams, but among those who do, hard work is always a component.”
― Kemper Donovan, The Busy Body

“sometimes there was nothing better than sitting next to another person and thinking your own thoughts alongside them—nothing more intimate than being alone together. Maybe this was”
― Kemper Donovan, The Decent Proposal