“Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.”

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.