58 quotes found
"[Responding to Waitress] Madame, sir, baby, child, whatever..."
"FINISH THE FUCKING STORY!"
"A drug person can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth, but nobody should be asked to handle this trip. Bazooko's Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich."
"How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, 'cause it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'd report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they'll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"
"I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody was giving booze to these god damn things! It wont be long now, before they tear us to shreds."
"[Yelling to Dr. Gonzo] PLEASE, TELL ME ABOUT THE FUCKING GOLF SHOES!"
"Jesus! Bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing, intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes."
"We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon."
"Don't go near that elevator - that's just what they want us to do... trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement."
"My attorney had never caught on to the notion espoused by some former drug users that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter."
"Psychedelics are almost irrelevant in a town where you can wander in a casino any time in the day or night and witness the crucifixion of a gorilla."
"There was no sense in blowing everything away for the sake of some violent ape I'd never even met."
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era... The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something, maybe not, in the long run. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
"There was only one road back to L.A., U.S. interstate 15. Just a flat-out high speed burn through Baker, and Barstow, and Berdoo. Then on to the Hollywood freeway straight into frantic oblivion. Safety... obscurity... just another freak in the freak kingdom. We'd gone in search of the American dream, it had been a lame fuck around. A waste of time. There was no point in looking back. Fuck no, not today, thank you kindly. My heart was filled with joy. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger, a man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident. The bolded lines are from the film version."
"Everything was automatic. I could sit in the red-leather driver's seat and make every inch of the car jump, by touching the proper buttons. It was a wonderful machine: Ten grand worth of gimmicks and big-priced Special Effects. The rear-windows leaped up with a touch, like frogs in a dynamite pond. The white canvas top ran up and down like a roller-coaster. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights & dials & meters that I would never understand — but there was no doubt in my mind I was in a superior machine."
"[yelling at a crowd in a parking lot] You people voted for Hubert Humphrey! And you killed Jesus!"
"Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow."
"Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor function. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it."
"With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know."
"[points skyward] Oh, you evil bastard! This your work. You better take care of me, Lord, 'cause if you don't you'll have me on your hands!"
"1965. The great San Francisco acid wave. I recall one night in a place called the Matrix. There I was. [does a double take, seeing the real Hunter S. Thompson sitting nearby (doppelganger)] Mother of God, there I am! Holy fuck! Uh...clearly I was a victim of the drug explosion - a natural street freak, just eating whatever came by."
"It's ok, he's just admiring the shape of your skull!"
"And when it comes to that fantastic note... when the rabbit bites his own head off, I want you to throw that fucking radio into the tub with me."
"Hey honkies. You folks wanna buy some heroin ? Goddamnit, I'm serious. All I'm trying to sell you is some pure fucking smack! This is the real stuff! You won't get hooked. I just got back from Vietnam."
"As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit."
"Four Days, Three nights, Two Convertibles, One City."
"Buy the ticket, take the ride."
"Johnny Depp - Raoul Duke"
"Benicio del Toro - Dr. Gonzo"
"Tobey Maguire - The Hitchhiker"
"Ellen Barkin - The Waitress at North Star Cafe"
"Gary Busey - The Highway Patrolman"
"Christina Ricci - Lucy"
"Mark Harmon - The Magazine Reporter at Mint 400"
"Cameron Diaz - The Blonde TV Reporter"
"Katherine Helmond - The Desk Clerk at Mint Hotel"
"Michael Jeter - Dr. Elron Bumquist"
"Craig Bierko - Lacerda"
"Lyle Lovett - The Road Person"
"Flea - Hippie"
"No need to panic. I'll just lash together a few raw facts, a little bit of old Negro wisdom, and this nightmare is over."
"[Urging his dog to attack a Nixon mannequin] Bronco ... Nixon."
"There, chew on that gibberish for awhile, you heartless scum!"
"I was a working journalist, a hired geek of sorts, and Lazlo was great copy and sometimes a great lawyer. It was a fast, strange time and we worked in a fast, strange ways."
"[Reacting to a police officer's testimony in court] You were looking for a bomb in a pack of cigarettes?"
"I hate to advocate alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone but they've always worked for me."
"You couldn't invent someone like Carl Lazlo. He was a ... he was one of a kind. He was a mutant. A real heavyweight water buffalo type ... who could chew his way through a concrete wall and spit out the other side covered with lime and chalk and look good in doing it."
"He became a man the day of the greatest game he ever played. Everything he ever knew about common decency and morality he learned that day in December from Alan "The Horse" Ameche; and today in the Superbowl he would earn his wings. The crowd had assembled; a crowd of America's elite. Toyata salesmen from all around the country—orientals and even those suspected of being orientals—stacked on the thirty yard line watching him sweat and wipe caked blood from his face. The Gallow brothers—Ernest and Julio—party guys who had skinned a few Mexicans and forced them to carry them on their shoulders down to the pre-game tailgate parties at the colosseum. The Pepsi and Coca Cola bottlers of America—Coke adds life; It's the real thing—bombarded by missiles; flying flaming matchbook covers. The waterheads from General Motors up in the top seats where they belong; getting the worst of the pollution. All sorts of weird motherfuckers were at the game."
"Super Sunday. Dawn. My recollections of the last twelve hours are very dim. All that I know for certain is that shortly after I checked in, two third-world drug abusers disguised as hotel employees forced their way into my room; ransacked it, drank all my liquor, did all my drugs, stole my dinner. If the security precautions aren't beefed up at this hotel; I'm looking for safer accommodations. It's a sad state of affairs when this reporter has to go heavily armed to breakfast."
"Well I guess if I had to swear one way or another, I'd say Lazlo wasn't insane. He just had very strange rhythms. But he stomped on the terra. Lord Buckley said that. It's hard to say he got what he deserved, because he never really got anything, at least not in this story. And right now, this story is all we have ... It's sad. But what's really sad is it never got weird enough for me. I moved to the country when the boat got too crowded. Then I learned that President Nixon had been eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana for no good reason at all. Golly, you hear a lot of savage and unnatural things about people these days. Lazlo and Nixon are both gone now, but I don't think I'm going to believe that 'til I can gnaw on their skulls with my very own teeth. Fuck those people, huh? If they're out there, I'm going to find them, and I'm going to gnaw on their skulls. Because it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me."
"As your attorney, I advise you to leave this room at once."
"As your ex-attorney, I advise you not to worry."
"I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone... but they've always worked for me."
"Based on the twisted legend of Hunter S. Thompson"
"Bill Murray — Dr. Hunter S. Thompson"
"Peter Boyle — Carl Lazlo, Esq."
"Bruno Kirby — Marty Lewis"