William McKeen Quotes

One of Hunter's first acts upon moving to Colorado was serving as best man at Billy's wedding to Anne Willis. Aside from Hunters putting out his cigarette in the holy water, the wedding transpired without major incident.

Barger thought Hunter provoked Junkie George so that the beating could be used as a gimmick to promote the book.

Hunter Thompson wrote suicide notes all his life.

To create a balance of power and pedigree in the house, Hunter sent five bucks off to an ad he'd seen in the back pages of a magazine and received his mail-order doctor-of-divinity degree. He began referring to himself as Dr. Thompson and punctuated remarks with his afterword: "I am, after all, a doctor." Friends picked up on the joke, and he was "the Good Doctor" for the rest of his life.

But he discovered his success later, when he began to write just like he talked.

In these letters to Ridley, Hunters Gonzo style began to rear its head. One of the characteristics of the style Hunter developed was his preoccupation of getting the story. In fact, getting the story became the story. His writing could be classified as metajournalism, journalism about the process of journalism.

The latest firing had put him at a crossroads: he could continue with the fantasy of being a writer, or he could actually make the commitment.

Hunter was picked as a promising electronics technician because he aced the Air Force radio-tech exam. Hunter shrugged off the the triumph. Tests were easy. You didn't have to know about radio and electronics; you just needed to be savvy in answering multiple-choice questions. He scored so high, the military thought he was the second coming of Marconi.

Life as Hunter Thompson's mother was no weenie roast.

His journalism was usually about journalism: no matter what he started out off writing about, he ended up writing about Hunter Thompson trying to cover a story.

He taught himself to write, retyping books by writers he admired: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner... the usual heavyweights. He said he wanted to get inside the rhythm of their language and find his own stlye.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is perfect in the same way that The Great Gatsby is perfect. Take a pencil and read these books, looking for something that doesn't sound right, something you'd want to change. You'll leave the page untouched.