Quotes from Hunter S. Thompson

Hey, honkies!" my attorney screamed. "Goddamnit, I'm serious! I want to sell you some pure fuckin' smack!

The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado.

Consciousness Expansion" went out with LBJ … and it is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon.

I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur , and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.

In a generation of swine, the one-eyed pig is king.

It drops us into a vigorous current, a constant state of misguided control. The doomed generation takes a final step forward, ignoring all the signs that state the obvious, and leaps into a trip no drug known to man could ever encompass.

Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

It's Your World...Pay Attention

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

Las Vegas is not the kind of town where you want to drive down Main Street aiming a black bazooka-looking instrument at people.

This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don't Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.

Finally we came over a rise and I saw the Caribbean...My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Regan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.

Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream.

If the thing bites down much harder I might wig out and demand beer... stay away from the phone, watch the red arrow... this typewriter is keeping me on my rails, without it I'd be completely adrift and weird.

Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn't handle the pressure.

In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome:

Oh ignorant youth, the world is not a joyous place.

They would owe most of their success to a curious rape mania that rides on the shoulder of American journalism like some jeering, masturbating raven. Nothing grabs an editor's eye like a good rape.

That gin-soaked little Nazi from the Gazette got pissed off when you didn't doff your hat for the national anthem," Burgin explained. "He kept bitching about you to the guy in charge of the press box, then he got that asshole who works for him all cranked up and they started talking about having you arrested." "Jesus creeping shit," I muttered. "Now I know why I got out of sportswriting.

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that we can't BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

To them the appearance of the Hell's Angels must have seemed like a wonderful publicity stunt. In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome: Frank Sinatra, Alexander King, Elizabeth Taylor, Raoul Duke... they have that extra "something".