Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

"OK for now. I enjoyed my quick, high-powered visit over there and look forward to a dead-game replay when I'm in better condition. Tell Hinckle he'd better take some liver exercises...and also to get braced for my wild cards, which don't always mix well with grapefruit juice and burbon.- To Peter Collier 10/11/1967"

"About a week earlier I had finished a book (on the Hell's Angels, scheduled this fall by Random House) and I felt that I needed about a week of total degeneration to cool out my system. To this end I went down to Big Sur and Monterery and filled my body with every variety of booze and drug available to modern man. For six or seven days I ran happily amok - spending money, sitting in baths, and futilely hunting wild boar with a .44 Magnum revolver. At one point I gave my car away to a man who paid $25 for the privilege of pushing it off a 400-foot cliff. - to Max Scherr editor, Berkley Barb 7/20/1966"

"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me."

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"

"We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."