TimeOut

A few quotes from Hunter S. Thompson (18-Jul-1937 ~ 20-Feb-2005), an American journalist, author, and founder of the "gonzo" journalism movement (a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative).

"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." 

— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

"Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio." 

— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

"Like most 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 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, The Rum Diary

"All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem"

— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

"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, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Believe it or not there was a limited edition photo book: "Gonzo: Photographs by Hunter S. Thompson", AMMO Books, 2006, ISBN 0-9786076-0-0.  I would love to find a copy at a reasonable price.

Casey

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Photo Credit: the Paris Review

Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism

Issue 156, Fall 2000