Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

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

“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

“Pray to God, but row away from the rocks.”

“Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing.”

“I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.”

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

“To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.”

“On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.”

“If you can't make yourself understood by your friends, you'll be in trouble when your enemies come for you.”

“Poor bastard. Wait 'till he sees the bats.”

“I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.”

“This is the fast lane, folks… and some of us like it here.”

“I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.”

“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.”

“I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.”

“and the sad notes floated out to the
patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly”

“Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.”

“You took too much man, too much, too much.”

“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…”

“One of them is knowing the difference between Morality and Wisdom. Morality is temporary, Wisdom is permanent… Ho ho. Take that one to bed with you tonight.”

“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

“He had come so far from himself that I don't
think he knew who he was anymore.”

“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.”

“At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.”

“and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.”

“He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

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

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

“Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.”

“You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.”

“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.”

“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…”

“I knew a Buddhist once, and I've hated myself ever since. The whole thing was a failure.”

“An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it.”

“If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”

“A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long.”

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

“You can't hoard fun. It has no shelf life.”

“The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb grey hairs”

“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.”

“I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.”

“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks ofchallenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”

“Whatever he might have denied me was unimportant; it was the
fact that he could deny me anything at all, even what I didn't want”

“We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit… You must realize that we've found the main nerve."

I know," he said. "That's what gives me the Fear.”

“I am a road man for the lords of karma.”

“A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums.”

“right' i said. 'but first, we need the car. and after that, the cocaine. and then the tape recorder, for special music, and some acapulco shirts.”