The city's frightening now. That's the basis of my reaction to Las Vegas. It's not the city I wrote about. It's not the same place at all. You'll notice that even the - what do you call them? - milestone or trademark casinos are now gone.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Las Vegas City Life, Jun. 7, 2002
Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom
I was never trying, necessarily, to be an outlaw. It was just the place in which I found myself.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
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.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Kingdom of Fear
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Songs of the Doomed
Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Gonzo Papers
What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
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.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Hell's Angels
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
I believe that the major operating ethic in American society right now, the most universal want and need is to be on TV. I've been on TV. I could be on TV all the time if I wanted to. But most people will never get on TV. It has to be a real breakthrough for them. And trouble is, people will do almost anything to get on it. You know, confess to crimes they haven't committed. You don't exist unless you're on TV. Yeah, it's a validation process.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Atlantic Online, Aug. 26, 1997
The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Curse of Lono
The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like f***ing — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me ... and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
Freedom, Truth, Honour — you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
I don't know why people think that the Mafia is merciless and badder than you know -- and yet they don't assume that the President of the United States is in a position of such power, and that of course he's going to use the same fucking tools as the Mafia.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Atlantic Online, Aug. 26, 1997
Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
I still feel needles in my back when I think about all the horrible disasters that would have befallen me if I had permanently moved to San Francisco and rented a big house, joined the company dole, become national-affairs editor for some upstart magazine—that was the plan around 1967. But that would have meant going to work on a regular basis, like nine to five, with an office—I had to pull out.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
They say that "he who flies highest, falls farthest" — and who am I to argue? But we can't forget that "he who doesn't flap his wings, never flies at all."
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Kingdom of Fear
If you consider the great journalists in history, you don't see too many objective journalists on that list.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Atlantic Monthly, Sep. 17, 1997
who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Hell's Angels
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Curse of Lono
For a loser Vegas is the meanest town on earth.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are.... These occasions are rare, but they happen — despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, "Fear and Loathing in Elko," Rolling Stone, Jan. 23, 1992
The Edge ... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others--the living--are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Hell's Angels
Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Kingdom of Fear
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride ... and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well ... maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Most of my stuff is just a series of false leads. I'll approach a story as a subject and then make a whole bunch of different runs at the lead. They're all good writing but they don't connect. So I end up having to string leads together.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Better than Sex
I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright... Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Rolling Stone, 1976
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives ... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Proud Highway
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, "Kingdom of Fear," Sep. 12, 2001
With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says "you are nothing," I will be a writer.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Gonzo
Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
