Hunter S. Thompson
There is nothing Modern about doing dumb things for dumb reasons.Collection: Dumb
It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy.Collection: Boys
The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. “What’s wrong?” I yelled. “We can’t stop here. This is bat country!Collection: Country
Bill Clinton does not inhale marijuana, right? You bet. Like I chew on LSD but I don't swallow it.'Collection: Marijuana
we left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.Collection: Wall
Some people will tell you that slow is good - but I'm here to tell you that fast is better.Collection: People
Jesus! Did I SAY that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious.Collection: Jesus
I am a road man for the lords of karma.Collection: Karma
Get out of control, but appear under control. It?s not bad to alarm other people, though ? it?s good for them.Collection: Adventure
I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.Collection: Epic
Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism.Collection: Ideas
Don't have sex in the lobby - it's usually awkward.Collection: Sex
Timothy Leary and I kept the same hours. He believed, as I do, that “After midnight, all things are possible.Collection: Midnight
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser.Collection: Stupid
I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real.Collection: Real
A cap of good acid costs $5, and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony, with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.Collection: Symphony
Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception – especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far to relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.Collection: Strong
If you get people asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers.Collection: People
A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley.Collection: Men
Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.Collection: Dream
Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach.Collection: Bridges
There's a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.Collection: Party
[Chicago]: This vicious, stinking zoo, this mean-grinning, mace-smelling boneyard of a city: an elegant rockpile of a monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit.Collection: Zoos
All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Remembered line from a long- forgotten poemCollection: Heart
No one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.Collection: Mean
I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting.Collection: Father
Familiarity seems to breed contemptCollection: Contempt
God's mercy on you degenerate swine.Collection: Degenerates
Wake up and ponder the futureCollection: Travel
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.Collection: Perfection
Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything.Collection: Police
There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.Collection: Mind
No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.Collection: Reality
When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it...So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were - the writer.Collection: Writing
We can't stop here, this is bat country!Collection: Country
There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.Collection: Next
All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.Collection: White
Good mescaline comes on slow. The first hour is all waiting, then about halfway through the second hour you start cursing the creep who burned you, because nothing is happening...and then ZANG!Collection: Waiting
I never knew where I was going, but I ripped the tits off of everything that got in my way. By the time they figured me out, it was too late.Collection: Too Late
Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid war on the other side of the worldCollection: Stupid
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for meCollection: Money
Fear is just another word for ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.Collection: Mean
To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.Collection: Men
Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.Collection: Truth
It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die.Collection: Epic
I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.Collection: Lying
I knew a Buddhist once, and I've hated myself ever since.Collection: Buddhist
I need beaches, and blackness, and moonlit nakedness.Collection: Beach