Political stuff is all about his [Hunter S. Thompson] reaction to a situation. And my stuff is much more externally driven.

Every pleasure you forgoe on Earth is a pleasure you won't get in heaven.

I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.

Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.

Cockfighting has always been my idea of a great sport -- two armed entrées battling to see who'll be dinner.

There's nothing inherently lame about electricity. I've got a basement full of power tools that all operate with electricity, and they're manly items. And when you see a great big locomotive hauling a mile of freight cars, that's a hybrid. A lot of people don't understand that.

The Russians could have some (warheads) aimed at Japan, so if we act up they can destroy our economy.