Hunter S. Thompson Vegas Quotations

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

With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.

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.

Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

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.

Too weird to live, too rare to die!

Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile 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. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.

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.

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.

Still humping the American Dream

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.

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.

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

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.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor skills, blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue - the mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting, because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can’t control it.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

A little bit of this town goes a very long way.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

We can't stop here, this is bat country!

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.

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.

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.

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.

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.

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.

No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.