Hit him again, Jack! He's crazy!

The thing that was important to me about Hemingway at the time was that Hemingway taught me that you could be a writer and get away with it.

You took too much man, too much, too much.

I can't think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there's been a reaction, there's been no journalism. It's cause and effect.

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. Probably at the next gas station.

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.

With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.