William McKeen

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"Hunter Thompson wrote suicide notes all his life."

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

"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."

"The Dream obsessed him ... but what was it? Was it Horatio Alger, rags to riches, the idea that you could start with nothing and end up rolling naked in stacks of hundreds? Or was it a dream of freedom? Personal freedom...or the concept of freedom that the founders brought into the whole world?"

"He wrote his mother that he had begun to hate the sight of his typewriter."

"This writing wasn't painful. It was like being high."

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

"And whether he wanted to be or not, he was famous."

"For a man complaining about the agony of celebrity, he wasn't doing anything to stop perpetuating his image as America's premier outlaw journalist."

"To the generation of young political reporters, Hunter was Mount Rushmore, a living god on earth."

"The lifestyle of the character he had created had consumed him."

"Some of the locals began to think that maybe Hunter was getting out of control."

"Hunter couldn't stop working. McCumber remembered Hunter working nine days without sleep."

"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 to him saw as he agonized over his words spoke to how much went into making it look like a breeze."

"Nothing infuriates an academic more than a talented and successful colleague."

"He kept growing. He thought it was very important to keep growing all your life."

"Putting Hunter in context was tough."

"Now the ashes drifted, as Hunter must have known they would, back toward the guests standing in front of the viewing pavilion. As the guests stood holding their glasses, the ash floated and settled into their drinks."