His legions of stoned admirers probably really thought he took a hundred hits of acid before sitting down to write. But the craftsmanship those close… - William McKeen

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.

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.

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.