Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.

Things are no longer what they seem to be. My telephones are haunted, and animals whisper at me from unseen places.

Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism.

A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley.

I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger: A man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.

Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.

Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.