“Across the board... Not junkies or freaks, but people who were just as comfortable with drugs like weed, booze, or coke as we are - and we're not weird, are we? Hell no, we're just overworked professionals who need to relax now and then, have a bit of the whoop and the giggle, right?”

American journalist and author

Hunter S. Thompson was an American journalist and author, best known as a pioneer of New Journalism. He became widely known for Hell's Angels (1967) and for the vivid, confrontational style that later came to be called Gonzo journalism. For Hell's Angels, he spent a year with the Hells Angels motorcycle club and wrote from direct experience of their lives. His profile rose further with “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” a 1970 article for Scanlan's Monthly that helped establish his reputation as a countercultural writer and a central figure in Gonzo, where the writer becomes part of the story.