Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who see it coming and jump aside.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, interview, Nov. 1, 2004
The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of 'em don't even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that goddamn marrywanna ... yeah, and just between you and me Fred thats probably all for the best.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Life does turn on so many queer things ... ball bearings and banana skins.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think of the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Gonzo Papers
Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles — a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other — that kept me going.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Rum Diary
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Gonzo Papers
Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Associated Press interview, 2003
There's a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Atlantic Online, Aug. 26, 1997
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, "Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl," Rolling Stone, Feb. 28, 1974
I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
I measure my life in pages. If I have pages at dawn, it's been a good night.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, The Paris Review, fall 2000
Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation--all expenses paid--wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera ... but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that's where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
A little bit of this town goes a very long way.
