Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary (1998)

29 Sourced Quotes

View all Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
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?

Hunter S. Thompson
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.

Hunter S. Thompson
She was wearing the same clothes, but now she looked haggard and dirty. The delicate illusions that get us through life can only stand so much strain.

Hunter S. Thompson
The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories — not of things I have done but of things I have failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back.

Hunter S. Thompson
I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.

Hunter S. Thompson
There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.

Hunter S. Thompson
There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.

Hunter S. Thompson
Disgusting as he usually was, on rare occasions he showed flashes of stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard.

Hunter S. Thompson
It was a maddening image and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum.

Hunter S. Thompson
I sat there for a long time, and thought about a lot of things. Foremost among them was the suspicion that my strange and ungovernable instincts might do me in before I had a chance to get rich. No matter how much I wanted those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction — toward anarchy, poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas goat.

Hunter S. Thompson
He had come so far from himself that I don't think he knew who he was anymore.

Hunter S. Thompson
Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception — especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they are scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

Hunter S. Thompson
I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a future so vague there was no sense talking about it.

Hunter S. Thompson
I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes.

Hunter S. Thompson
I like this place he said with a grin I like to sit up here and look down at the beach and think of all the good things I could do with a Luger.

Hunter S. Thompson
It was the kind of town that made you feel like Humphrey Bogart: you came in on a bumpy little plane, and, for some mysterious reason, got a private room with a balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened. I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.

Hunter S. Thompson
In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.

Hunter S. Thompson
I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.

Hunter S. Thompson
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who see it coming and jump aside.

Hunter S. Thompson
It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn't say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

Hunter S. Thompson
Whatever he might have denied me was unimportant; it was the fact that he could deny me anything at all, even what I didn't want

Hunter S. Thompson
Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think of the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would.

Hunter S. Thompson
By the time we got to the street, I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I'd spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. There was a peace and brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships and the sea beyond them, and I felt crazy to be free with a whole day ahead of me.
Then I realized I would sleep most of the day, and my excitement disappeared.

Hunter S. Thompson
He wandered into the Newsroom and asked for a job the same way he'd walk into a barbershop and ask for a haircut, and with no more idea of being turned down.

Hunter S. Thompson
If I had a Luger, I thought, I could drill the bastards. I leaned on one elbow and pointed a finger at the window, seeing what kind of shot I would get. Perfect. There was just enough light in the street for a good silhouette. I knew it would happen quickly, I'd have no choice: just pull the trigger and go deaf from the terrible noise, a frenzy of screaming and scratching followed by a ghastly thump of a body knocked back and down to the sidewalk.

Hunter S. Thompson
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles — a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other — that kept me going.

Hunter S. Thompson
Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks...

Hunter S. Thompson
The stewardess reached down to fasten Bloor's seatbelt. I saw his left arm snake out and settle affectionately around her shoulders. Good God! I thought. This is it. I could see the headlines in tomorrow's News. But the stewardess only smiled and backed off a few steps, dismissing Bloor's crude advance with a slap at his arm and an icy professional smile. I tried to return it, but my face was not working properly.

Hunter S. Thompson
And the sad notes floated out to the patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly

Hunter S. Thompson