Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

Las Vegas is a city of dreams.People dream big in our town, whether it's hitting Megabucks or landing a job to support your family, buying a home, opening a business, getting a second chance in a new town. We all have dreams. I believe it's my responsibility, it's my job, along with the members of the City Council, city staff and employees to create an environment that is conducive to helping our fellow citizens realize their dreams.

Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover.

Visiting Las Vegas is my dream. I would like to go there at least once. I wonder what kind of place it is. I'm feeling excited.

Man, I really like Vegas.

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

The reason you should go to Las Vegas is because, for only the second time, the second time, ever, they have rebuilt Sodom and Gomorrah. It's back!! And you have the opportunity to see it before it turns to salt. And you wanna get out there before the Christian Right finds out what we're up to and shits all over it.

L.A. likes to think of Las Vegas as the populuxe mirage of Hollywood, a place where middle-class tourists look like movie stars but aren’t, spend like millionaires but aren’t.

Las Vegas no less — the Ugly Shorts Heart of Darkness

...Las Vegas is the only town in the world whose skyline is made up neither of buildings, like New York, nor of trees, like Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but signs.

Vegas is gorgeous hyperreality, but most of the stuff people like here is not my cup of tea. I don't gamble, and I don't like Penn & Teller. I'd rather be locked into a basement full of Philip Glass recordings.

(Las Vegas) composes a night-time image of Babylon in the desert. But it is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor's orgy is now a democratic institution. It says: 'Topless Pizza Lunch.' (p. 280)

Perhaps the heart of the American Dream was found in the search.

Seriously, any other town you go to there's this little devil and a little angel on your shoulder. A little good advice, a little bad advice. – You go to Las Vegas, there's like a devil and a devil and they're just battling it out the whole time. It's like, "Smoke some crack!" "Get a hooker!" And then I go, "YEA! Yea, this is a good town. Smoke some crack and get a hooker! Alright!"