When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hunter S. Thompson
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
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.
Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
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.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.
Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.
If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
Politics is the art of controlling your environment.
Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.
No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination.
The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.
Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
As long as I'm learning something, I figure I'm OK - it's a decent day.
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Some may never live, but the crazy never die.
'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.
I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it.
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.
Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.
Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.
The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.
Gambling can turn into a dangerous two-way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly, and your life can go all to pieces.
If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
If Sunday is the Lord's day, then Saturday belongs to the Devil. It is the only night of the week when he gives out Free passes to the Late show at the Too Much Fun Club.
The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.
There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted.
I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.
You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.
Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.
A word to the wise is infuriating.
I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it... Never.
The Raiders of old were vicious and crazy and cruel. Hanging around their locker room was like hanging around the weight room at Folsom Prison.
I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.
All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.
That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.
Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional swine, and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired geek in some traveling backwoods carnival - the freaks who bite the heads off chickens - but Limbaugh is a modernized geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.
Richard Nixon was an evil man - evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.
