Biografía

Used a gold tipped cigarette holder, which was also a tar filter

RAF-style sunglasses

Novels often featured characters who were crazed and self-destructive

Novels often feature angry rants

Often featured characters based on himself and his experiences

After covering the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami for Rolling Stone, Thompson went for an evening swim in the ocean to clear his head. When a light tropical storm blew up, Thompson was caught in a riptide and swept out to sea. He spent the rest of the night fighting to swim back to the beach, finally crawling ashore at 9:00 A.M.

Following Richard Nixon's appearance in New Hampshire during the 1968 presidential campaign, he offered Thompson a lift to the airport on the condition that they would only talk about football. Thompson accepted, mostly because he thought Nixon knew nothing about the sport. Nixon turned out to be an avid fan.

To improve his writing style, he once copied F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" word for word, from start to finish.

His favorite pastime was to load a barrel or oil drum with explosives and then shoot it from a safe distance with one of his many handguns.

Ran for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, in 1969 on the Freak Power Party ticket, and narrowly lost.

(Concerning Garry Trudeau modeling the "Doonesbury" character "Duke" after him): "I've never met Garry Trudeau, but if I ever do, I'll set him on fire".

[Regarding Las Vegas from when he wrote "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas"] The city's frightening now. That's the basis of my reaction to Las Vegas. It's not the city I wrote about. It's not the same place at all. You'll notice that even the, what do you call them, milestone or trademark casinos are now gone.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

When I attended a press conference for Jimmy Carter, I signed more autographs than Carter did. The Secret Service agents didn't know who I was. They thought I was an astronaut.

[After the death of Richard Nixon in 1994] If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.