Frederick Exley

“Bunny Sue was nineteen. She had honey-bobbed hair and candid, near-insolent green eyes. She had a snub, delightful nose, a cool, regal,…

— Frederick Exley

“The world of the soap opera is the world of the Emancipated American Woman, a creature whose idleness is employed to no…

— Frederick Exley

In football a man was asked to do a difficult and brutal job, and he either did it or got out.

— Frederick Exley

I wanted to lie hour after hour on a couch, pouring out the dark, secret places of my heart--do this feeling that…

— Frederick Exley

“Now I see in that laughter a good deal of desperation and sadness. About to leave the haven of our separate universities…

— Frederick Exley

“There was a period when I lived on book reviews, when I had basked and drawn sustenance from what I deemed the…

— Frederick Exley

Unlike some men, I had never drunk for boldness or charm or wit; I had used alcohol for precisely what it was,…

— Frederick Exley

“Whether or not I am a writer,” I wrote, “I have—and this is both my curse and my virtue—cultivated the instinct of…

— Frederick Exley

“Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid…

— Frederick Exley

“Whenever I think of the man I was in those days, cutting across the nat-cropped grass of the campus, burdened down by…

— Frederick Exley

“I certainly didn't want to fight with him. I did, however, want to shout, "Listen, you son of a bitch, life isn't…

— Frederick Exley

“Listening now, it occured to me that I hadn't come very far over the yars -- no farther really than from one…

— Frederick Exley

“Then he lost all coherence and began a hysterical giggle, compounded with a slight twitch and very pronounced emission of saliva from…

— Frederick Exley

“That my lunacy had been recognized was chastening enough, but the judge's gratuitous "fatuous" carried with it intimations that I was in…

— Frederick Exley