The Hell's Angels try not to do anything halfway, and anyone who deals in extremes is bound to cause trouble, whether he means to or not. This, along with a belief in total retaliation for any offense or insult, is what makes the Hell's Angels unmanageable for the police and morbidly fascinating to the general public.

I got tired and embarrassed by the constant poverty of those years. I told Doug [ Brinkley] this is really going to be a horrible downer of a book [The Proud Highway] if all it's going to be is about being broke. I didn't like being reminded of desperation at all times.

As hideous and dumb as it sounds, I wouldn't be at all surprised by an invasion of Iraq on September II. I'll take a long shot bet on that.

Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the head with a big rubber basketball shoe.

I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actor, kidding ourselves on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.

Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything.