Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) - Quotes

Divine Intervention in a Challenging Situation

Gonzo: [''After cocaine blows away in the wind''] Did you see what GOD just did to us man!

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Communication Breakdown in a Chaotic Journey

Duke: [gets in the backseat] There's one thing you should probably understand. CAN YOU HEAR ME? GOOD! I want you to have all the background. This is a very ominous assignment - with overtones of extreme personal danger. I'm a Doctor of Journalism, man! This is important, goddamnit! This is a true story!...

Gonzo: GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY FUCKIN NECK!

Narrator: Our vibrations were getting nasty. But why? Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?

Duke: I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney. He's not just some dingbat I found on the strip, man. He's a foreigner. I think he's probably Samoan. But doesn't matter though, does it? Are you prejudiced?

Hitchhiker: Hell no.

Duke: I didn't think so. Because in spite of his race, this man is extremely valuable to me. Oh shit! I forgot about the beer! You want some?

Hitchhiker: No.

Duke: How bout some ether?

Hitchhiker: What?

Duke: Nevermind. Alright, let's get right to the heart of this thing.

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A Ride in Bat Country

Gonzo: Let's give that boy a ride!

Duke: What? No! We can't stop here! This is bat country!

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Descent into Hallucination and Confusion

Narrator: We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like:

Raoul Duke: I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.

Narrator: Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full with what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming:

Dr. Gonzo: Did you say something?

Raoul Duke: Hm? Never mind. It's your turn to drive.

Narrator: No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.

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Attorney's Advice on Substance Use

Dr. Gonzo: As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit.

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A Bold Sales Pitch for Heroin

Dr. Gonzo: Hey honkies. You folks wanna buy some heroin ? Goddamnit, I'm serious. All I'm trying to sell you is some pure fucking smack! This is the real stuff! You won't get hooked. I just got back from Vietnam.

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Radio and the Rabbit's Dark Fate

Dr. Gonzo: And when it comes to that fantastic note... when the rabbit bites his own head off, I want you to throw that fucking radio into the tub with me.

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Admiring the Shape of Your Skull

Dr. Gonzo: It's ok, he's just admiring the shape of your skull!

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Reflections on a Drug-Induced Experience

Raoul Duke: [does a double take, seeing the real Hunter S. Thompson sitting nearby (doppelganger)] 1965. The great San Francisco acid wave. I recall one night in a place called the Matrix. There I was. Mother of God, there I am! Holy fuck! Uh...clearly I was a victim of the drug explosion - a natural street freak, just eating whatever came by.

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Desperation and Accountability in Crisis

Raoul Duke: [points skyward] Oh, you evil bastard! This your work. You better take care of me, Lord, cause if you don't you'll have me on your hands!

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The Burden of Unseen Desires

Raoul Duke: With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know.

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The Effects of Devil Ether on Behavior

Raoul Duke: Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor function. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.

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Understanding Highway Cop Psychology

Raoul Duke: Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow.

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Critique of Political Choices and Consequences

Raoul Duke: [''yelling at a crowd in a parking lot''; [Hubert Humphrey; [wikipedia: Jewish_deicide|you killed Jesus] You people voted for ]! And ]!

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The Wonders of an Advanced Machine

Raoul Duke: Everything was automatic. I could sit in the red-leather driver's seat and make every inch of the car jump, by touching the proper buttons. It was a wonderful machine: Ten grand worth of gimmicks and big-priced Special Effects. The rear-windows leaped up with a touch, like frogs in a dynamite pond. The white canvas top ran up and down like a roller-coaster. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights & dials & meters that I would never understand — but there was no doubt in my mind I was in a superior machine.

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The Futility of the American Dream

Raoul Duke: [[w:San Bernardino, California|Berdoo] There was only one road back to L.A., U.S. interstate 15. Just a flat-out high speed burn through Baker, and Barstow, and ]. Then on to the Hollywood freeway straight into frantic oblivion. Safety... obscurity... just another freak in the freak kingdom. We'd gone in search of the American dream, it had been a lame fuck around. A waste of time. There was no point in looking back. Fuck no, not today, thank you kindly. My heart was filled with joy. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger, a man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident. The bolded lines are from the film version.

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Reflections on a Lost Era in Las Vegas

Raoul Duke: Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era... The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something, maybe not, in the long run. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

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Reflections on Reality and Surrealism

Raoul Duke: *This quote, while used in the movie, is not actually from the book. It was actually written by Thompson much later in "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat.

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The Uniqueness of God's Prototype

Raoul Duke: There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

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Rejecting violence for the unknown

Raoul Duke: There was no sense in blowing everything away for the sake of some violent ape I'd never even met.

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The Absurdity of Las Vegas Experience

Raoul Duke: Psychedelics are almost irrelevant in a town where you can wander in a casino any time in the day or night and witness the crucifixion of a gorilla.

The Limits of Perception and Reality

Raoul Duke: My attorney had never caught on to the notion espoused by some former drug users that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter.

Avoiding the Elevator Trap

Raoul Duke: Don't go near that elevator - that's just what they want us to do... trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement.

Excessive Substances and the Ether Binge

Raoul Duke: We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. 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.

Paranoia and Madness in a Troubling Place

Raoul Duke: Jesus! Bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing, intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes.

Inquiry About Golf Shoes

Raoul Duke: [''Yelling to Dr. Gonzo''] PLEASE, TELL ME ABOUT THE FUCKING GOLF SHOES!

Chaos in the Reptile Zoo

Raoul Duke: I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody was giving booze to these god damn things! It wont be long now, before they tear us to shreds.

Descent into Paranoia in the Desert

Raoul Duke: How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, cause it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'd report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they'll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?

Coping with Reality in a Distorted World

Raoul Duke: A drug person can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth, but nobody should be asked to handle this trip. Bazooko's Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich.