Hunter S. Thompson cytaty

strona 9

„Kto jest szczęśliwszym człowiekiem - ten, który stawił czoła burzy życia i przetrwał, czy ten, który pozostał bezpiecznie na brzegu i tylko egzystował?”

„Dziennikarstwo to nie zawód ani branża. To tylko mizerna szansa na zaistnienie dla popaprańców i odmieńców – fałszywe drzwi na zaplecze prawdziwego życia, obrzydliwa, zaszczana nora zabita dechami przez inspektorów budowlanych, ale dość głęboka, by każdy pijaczek mógł stoczyć się do niej z chodnika, żeby tam walić gruchę jak małpa w zoo.”

„Mieliśmy dwa worki marihuany, siedemdziesiąt pięć kulek meskaliny, pięć bibułek nasączonych ostrym kwasem, solniczkę nabitą kokainą, i całą galaktykę tęczowych dołersów, głupawek i nakręcaczy… a także ćwiartkę tequili, ćwiartkę rumu, skrzynkę budweisera, pół litra eteru i sporo amylu.”

„Słowo mądrości jest irytujące.”

„Dla każdej chwili triumfu, dla każdego wystąpienia piękna, wiele dusz musi być gwałconych.”

„Nieważne, jak bardzo chciałem tych wszystkich rzeczy, na które potrzebowałem pieniędzy, zawsze istniał jakiś diabelski prąd spychający mnie w przeciwnym kierunku – w stronę anarchii, nędzy i szaleństwa.”

„Strach jest tylko synonimem niewiedzy.”

„Dobrzy ludzie piją dobre piwo.”

„Byliśmy wtedy wojownikami, a nasze plemię było silne jak rzeka.”

„Nie lubię reklamować dragów, alkoholu, przemocy czy szaleństwa, ale oddawały mi one zawsze wielką przysługę.”

„Zawsze jest lepiej zgrywać wariata, aby później wydawać się kimś zupełnie normalnym.”

„Perspektywa pójścia na proces z adwokatem, który uznaje całe swoje życie w stylu „Przestępczość w Toku” nie jest zbyt szczęśliwa.”

„Nie ma nic bardziej nieodpowiedzialnego i bezradnego, niż człowiek w ciągu eterowym.”

„(…) obłęd królował wszędzie i o każdej porze, wszędzie mogłeś krzesać iskrę, mieliśmy kosmiczne poczucie sensu naszych działań.”

“There is nothing so unusual, they tell me, about coming back to your car and finding the radio aerial torn off, the windshield wipers bent up in the air like spaghetti, and all the windows smashed… for no particular reason except to make sure you know just exactly where it's at these days. Where indeed?”

“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.”

“The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.”

“No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”

“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.”

“"Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's phrase)…burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?”

“Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these Abu Ghraib photographs did.”

“Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon.”

“It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close…”

“Even that far-left radical bastard George S. McGovern — babbling a maddening litany of his most Far Out ideas — would be hard pressed to crank up a more than 30% animosity quotient.”

“He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.”

“Satan's Slaves, number three in the outlaw hierarchy, custom-bike specialists with a taste for the flesh of young dogs, flashy headbands and tender young blondes with lobotomy eyes.”

“How many times had he stood calmly back there on the duckboards and listened to respectable-looking people talk about raping the hotel penguins?”

“This blizzard of mind-warping war propaganda out of Washington is building up steam. Monday is Anthrax, Tuesday is Bankruptcy, Friday is Child-Rape, Thursday is Bomb-scares, etc., etc., etc… If we believed all the brutal, frat-boy threats coming out of the White House, we would be dead before Sunday. It is pure and savage terrorism reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”

“It was Saturday night in America, and I felt like a native son.”

“What we are looking at on all our TV sets is a man who finally, after 24 years of frenzied effort, became the President of the United States with a personal salary of $200,000 a year and an unlimited expense account including a fleet of private helicopters, jetliners, armored cars, personal mansions and estates on both coasts and control over a budget beyond the wildest dream of King Midas … and all the dumb bastard can show us, after five years of total freedom to do anything he wants with all this power, is a shattered national economy, disastrous defeat in a war we could have ended four years ago on far better terms than he finally came around to, and a hand-picked personal staff put together through five years of screening, whose collective criminal record will blow the minds of high-school American History students for the next 100 years.”

“We are like pygmies lost in a maze of haze. We are not at war, we are having a nervous breakdown, again.”

“Once I establish credit, I may be able to function. A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.”

“I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.”

“But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse... The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.”

“Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.”

“The streets of every city in America are filled with men who would pay all the money they could lay their hands on to be transformed, even for a day, into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk all over cops, extort drinks from terrified bartenders and roar out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker's daughter.”

“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.”

“For myself, I would much prefer to be stuck with Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament, than stuck with George Bush in the White House. It is the difference between losing your wallet at a cock fight and losing all your credit cards forever, along with your job and your house and your ability to earn enough money to pay off your sports-gambling debts or even a six-pack on game day...”

“Jesus, I thought, I am ripped right straight to the tits. Where am I? Are we going up or down? Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew I was sitting in a jeep in the parking lot of a night club on an island off the Mexican coast — but how could I really be sure, with another part of my brain apparently convinced that I was looking down on the huge glittering bowl of Los Angeles from the cockpit of a 727? Was that the Milky Way? Or Sunset Boulevard? Orion, or the Beverly Hills Hotel?”

“Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.”

“All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.”