Hunter S. Thompson

“Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end- of anything.”

“Writing is the flip side of sex - it's only good when it's over.”

“Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread.So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.”

“I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.”

“The writer must be a participant in the scene... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.”

“I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.”

“Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.”

“Whatever else the Florida primary might or might not have proved, it put a definite kink in the Media Theory of politics. It may be true, despite what happened to Lindsay and Muskie in Florida, that all you have to do to be President of the U.S.A. is look “attractive” on TV and have enough money to hire a Media Wizard. Only a fool or a linthead would argue with the logic at the root of the theory: If you want to sell yourself to a nation of TV addicts, you obviously can’t ignore the medium… but the Florida vote at least served to remind a lot of people that the medium is only a tool, not a magic eye. In other words, if you want to be President of the U.S.A. and you’re certified “attractive,” the only other thing you have to worry about when you lay out all that money for a Media Wizard is whether or not you’re hiring a good one instead of a bungler… and definitely lay off the Reds when you go to the studio.”

“Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.”

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

“The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.”

“I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.”

“There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.”

“February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.”

“There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners.”

“So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

“Rude people will now & then ask me why I think I know so much about Politics. I tell them it's because I'm Smart... But that is a lie: The real reason is because I'm an incurable Gambling addict.”

“All gamblers lose regularly, but they rarely discuss it in public. Losing is bad for the image, dude. Nobody buys Hot Tips from Losers. Remember that.”

“Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.”

“I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.”