Hunter S Thompson: quotes

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

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 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.

 'So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head...but in a matter of minutes i'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves.

 Then into first gear , forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out...thirty-five, forty-five...then into second and wailing through the lights, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf  loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these...and with three lanes in a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything...then into third , the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

Bent forward , far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. tail-lights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly - zaaaaaaap- going past and leaning down for a curve where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, indeed... but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centreline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. 

But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right...and that's when the strange music start, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms.

You can barley see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it...howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down a long hill... letting off now watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge...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. The others - the living- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of Motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions. - Hunter S Thompson.

(taken from his book 'Hells Angels')