Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

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Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

Hunter S. Thompson
No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Hunter S. Thompson
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.

Hunter S. Thompson
You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.

Hunter S. Thompson
The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. What's wrong? I yelled. We can't stop here. This is bat country!

Hunter S. Thompson
The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab.

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

Hunter S. Thompson
But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.

Hunter S. Thompson
All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.

Hunter S. Thompson
I tend to sweat heavily in warm climates. My clothes are soaking wet from dawn to dusk. This worried me at first, but when I went to a doctor and described my normal daily intake of booze, drugs and poison he told me to come back when the sweating stopped.

Hunter S. Thompson
The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life

Hunter S. Thompson
Las Vegas is a society of armed masturbators/gambling is the kicker here/sex is extra/weird trip for high rollers... house-whores for winners, hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.

Hunter S. Thompson
Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store.

Hunter S. Thompson
Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop.

Hunter S. Thompson
North Vegas is where you go if you're a hooker turning forty and the syndicate men on the strip decide you're no longer much good for business out there with the high rollers.

Hunter S. Thompson
Which is not really a hell of a lot to ask, Lord, because the final incredible truth is that I am not guilty. All I did was take your gibberish seriously... and you see where it got me? My primitive Christian instincts have made me a criminal.

Hunter S. Thompson
In some circles, the Mint 400 is a far, far better thing than the Superbowl, the Kentucky Derby, and the lower Oakland roller derby finals all rolled into one. This race attracts a very special breed.

Hunter S. Thompson
A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years.

Hunter S. Thompson
Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn't handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion - often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation - that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter.

Hunter S. Thompson
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

Hunter S. Thompson
This is one of the Hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don't Burn the Locals.... If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.

Hunter S. Thompson
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

Hunter S. Thompson
This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.

Hunter S. Thompson
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

Hunter S. Thompson
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...

Hunter S. Thompson
Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

Hunter S. Thompson
The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel-white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.

Hunter S. Thompson
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Hunter S. Thompson
There is an ancient Celtic axiom that says 'Good people drink good beer.' Which is true, then as now. Just look around you in any public barroom and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it.

Hunter S. Thompson
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.

Hunter S. Thompson