Frederick Exley quotes:

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.

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.

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