Exley Quotes & Sayings
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Top Exley Quotes

Designing for children carries a social responsibility beyond bright colors and scaled-down furnishings that only perceptive and informed grown-ups can understand. — Sharon Exley

I opened the book to the title page, which said the book was "A Fictional Memoir." I had no idea what this meant, except that maybe it was one of the ways that Exley was crazy: maybe when he called his book a fictional memoir, it meant that he couldn't make up his mind, which is one of the things people really mean when they call someone crazy. — Brock Clarke

The three of us had a pact, governed by signals - pinching one another, agreeing to step fiercely on each other's toes when we felt riotous laughter welling up within us. It was not that any of us doubted the efficacy of group therapy for alcoholics (it is probably the only treatment), but, oh, dear heart, alcoholics in the loony bin! — Frederick Exley

looked up, a frown on his face. "That was a necessity. Our wardrobe needed defending from all the girls hiding in it." Allie struggled to control her growing laughter. "Do tell, do you suffer many girls hiding in your furniture? — A.W. Exley

The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about cats.
(From a schoolboy's essay, 1903.) — Helen Exley

She extracted a card from amongst her ample decollete and held it out toward Cara.
This is starting to feel like a bizarre treasure hunt, following clues written on little cards." [Cara thought] — A.W. Exley

Whenever I think of the man I was in those days, cutting across the nat-cropped grass of the campus, burdened down by the weight of the books in which I sought the consolation of other men's grief, and aburdened futher by the large weight of my own bitterness, the whole vision seems a nightmare. There were girls all about me, so near and yet so out of reach, a pastel nightmare of honey-blond, pink-lipped, golden-legged, lemon-sweatered girls — Frederick Exley

Well, look what the scamp has dragged home with her. Pirates, henchmen and naughty, naughty men - "
A soft whack noise was followed by a startled squawk, as a tea towel hit Nessy in the face. She pulled the cloth down, shooting daggers at her lifetime companion.
"What was that for?"
Nan tapped her chin. "You're drooling dear, might want to mop up a bit. — A.W. Exley

Don't let anyone make you feel guilty because you are still grieving. Grief is a slow process and often takes as long as two years to complete its healing work. That doesn't mean that you will always hurt this badly, but it does mean that you should give yourself permission to take as much time as you need to work through your loss. — Richard Exley

Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar. — Frederick Exley

Work ethic and this determination is all part of escaping the depressive side. Of course I'm manic depressive, maybe not to the degree that Exley was, but I think all writers are. There are highs and lows. Look at David Foster Wallace. — T.C. Boyle

A bear teaches us that if the heart is true, it doesn't matter much if an ear drops off. — Helen Exley

She forgot the small detail of the business she wanted to engage him on. She enjoyed saying no to him, repeatedly. Refusal was probably a new experience for him, too, but it was hard to tell. — A.W. Exley

Then he lost all coherence and began a hysterical giggle, compounded with a slight twitch and very pronounced emission of saliva from his mouth. When he finally fell silent, the stillness was of that horrified kind that follows a fart in a Methodist church. — Frederick Exley

Music is the voice of all sorrow, all joy. It needs no translation. — Helen Exley

People are not photographs. There's more to them than the style of their hair or the cut of their clothes. Think of yourself as an explorer - you need to dig to unveil the person they are on the inside. — A.W. Exley

Listening now, it occured to me that I hadn't come very far over the yars -- no farther really than from one "gang bang" to another, save that I had learned, as B. had yet to learn, that tomorrow the pain would be even greater. — Frederick Exley

damn lonely on the moral high ground. — A.W. 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, and tapering neck, a fine, intelligent mouth that covered teeth so startling they might have been cleansed by sun gods. Without any makeup save lipstick, her complexion was as milk flecked with butter, the odor she cast as wholesome as bread. On my first breathless vision of her, I wanted to bury my teeth, Dracula-like, into her flanks, knowing that she would bleed pure butterscotch. — Frederick Exley

Those proud of keeping an orderly desk never know the thrill of finding something they thought they had irretrievably lost. — Helen Exley

The average dog has one request to all humankind. Love me. — Helen Exley

Time to release the kraken, Mr Fenton, — A.W. 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 all a goddam football game! You won't always get the girl! Life is rejection and pain and loss" -- all those things I so cherishly cuddled in my slef-pitying bosom. I didn't, of course, say any such thing — 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 over my shoulder sat humanity and wisdom and generosity, a munificent heart
do this until that incredibly lovely day when the great man would say to me, his voice grave and dramatic with discovery: This is you, Exley. Rise and go back into the world a whole man. — Frederick Exley

you is akin to playing Russian roulette: both hobbies have a high chance of ending in a fatality." She — A.W. Exley

Unlike some men, I had never drunk for boldness or charm or wit; I had used alcohol for precisely what it was, a depressant to check the mental exhilaration produced by extended sobriety. — Frederick Exley

The book didn't want to be copied?
I should introduce it to the house that doesn't want any occupants. — A.W. Exley

she was close; a spot to one side called to her. The hairs on the backs of — A.W. Exley

it, I'm growing on you, aren't I?" she asked, a smile on her face as she placed a foot on the bottom step to the empty carriage. "Like a wart, darling," he replied with his accustomed grin, before shutting the carriage door after her. — A.W. Exley

used one end to loosen the tacks, — A.W. Exley

do you tell if someone is immortal?" she whispered. "You kill them, and see if they get up again," he answered, always pragmatic. — A.W. Exley

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

Are we immortal?" he paused in his exploration of her skin.
Mischief shone in her eyes. "Want me to shoot you and find out? — A.W. Exley

If it comes at all, Emerson has cautioned that one's call might not come for years. If it doesn't, he remarks it as only a reflection of the universe's faith in one's abstinence, nothing to move the heart to fret — Frederick Exley

I maimed you when I was only a child. Touch me now, and I'll kill you." She turned her back to him, and holding her head high, she strode out to the balcony. Conversation rose behind her. The — A.W. Exley

I hate you, wardrobe. But here is what's going to happen. I will close the doors, say a magic word, open the doors, and you will present me with a suitable evening gown.
Work, dammit. — A.W. Exley

There was a period when I lived on book reviews, when I had basked and drawn sustenance from what I deemed the light of their intelligence, the beneficience of their charm. But something had gone sour. Over the years I had read too much, in dim-lighted railway stations, lying on the davenports of strangers' houses, in the bleak and dismal wards of insane asylums. That reading had forced the charm to relinquish itself. Now I found that reviews were not only bland but scarcely, if ever, relevant; and that all books, whether works of imagination or the blatant frauds of literary whores, were approached by the reviewer with the same crushing sobriety. I wanted to reviewer to be fair, kind, and funny. I wanted to be made to laugh. — Frederick Exley

was something in the silence, aroma, and presence of the books that soothed an ache deep in her soul. A — A.W. Exley

That my lunacy had been recognized was chastening enough, but the judge's gratuitous "fatuous" carried with it intimations that I was in a blubbering, nose-picking state; an I had visions of arriving at my mother's door, garbed not in the "attractive," melancholic dementia of the poet but in the drooling, masturbatory, moony-eyed condition of the Mongoloid. — Frederick Exley

Crowbars are great for working out parental issues. — A.W. Exley

Thank all the people in the world who are always 10% kinder than they need to be. — Helen Exley