Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, regarded as a pioneer of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. He rose to prominence with the book Hell's Angels (1967), for which he lived a year among the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. In 1970, he wrote an unconventional article titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly, which further raised his profile as a countercultural figure. It also set him on the path to establish the subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", a style in which the writer becomes central to, and participant in the narrative.

Quotes

We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo to the end.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

Camping, Nature
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

Crime
Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.
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.
There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
Being shot out of a cannon is always better than being squeezed through a tube.
He who makes a beast of himself relieves himself the pain of being a man.
As your attorney i advise you to take a hit out of the small brown bottle in my shaving kit.
Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
You can turn your back on a person, but, never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.
Buy the ticket take the Ride
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.