Hunter S. Thompson Quotes (79 Quotes)

But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel-white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.

God's original prototype, too weird to live, too rare to die.

The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life

How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection..

There is nothing worse than a man in the throws of an ether bender.

I blew the horn a few times, hoping to call up an iguana. Get the buggers moving. They were out there, I knew, in that goddamn sea of cactus--hunkered down, barely breathing, and every one of the stinking little bastards was loaded with deadly poison.

There was absolutely no choice but to cut her adrift and hope her memory was fucked.

I was asleep when our plane hit the runway, but the jolt brought me instantly awake. I looked out the window and saw the Rocky Mountains. What the fuck was I doing here? I wondered. It made no sense at all. I decided to call my attorney as soon as possible. Have him wire me some money to buy a huge albino Doberman. Denver is a national clearing house for stolen Dobermans; they come from all parts of the country.

Too strange to live, too rare to die!

Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn't handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion - often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation - that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter.

Too weird to live, to rare to die.

Jesus Creeping God! Is there a priest in this tavern? I want to confess! I'm a fucking sinner! Venal, mortal, carnal, major, minor - however you want to call it, Lord... I'm guilty.

Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!

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...

We can't stop here, this is bat country!

Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

What do you want? Where's the goddamn ice I ordered? Where's the booze? There's a war on, man! People are being killed!

My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.

What kind of rat bastard psychotic would play that song- right now, at this moment?

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.

What? No. We can't stop here. This is bat country.

No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.

Which is not really a hell of a lot to ask, Lord, because the final incredible truth is that I am not guilty. All I did was take your gibberish seriously... and you see where it got me? My primitive Christian instincts have made me a criminal.

Still humping the American Dream

Who said anything about slicing you up? ... I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead-- nothing serious.

A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years.

Take it from me, there's nothing like a job well done. Except the quiet enveloping darkness at the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam after a job done any way at all.

With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know.

All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

You took too much man, too much, too much.

But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ''history'' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

And that, I think was the handle-that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense we didn't need that. Our energy would simply Prevail. There was no point in fighting-on our side or theirs, We had all the momentum we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died

The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.

No crying, no tears, only celebration. He wanted people to celebrate. He envisioned it to be a beautiful party. The most amazing people would be there. His friends would celebrate his life. And he was even specific that there would be clinking of ice and whisky.

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

A word to the wise is infuriating.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.