“You can be denounced from the heavens, and it only makes people interested.”
― Hooking Up
― Hooking Up
“I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation-with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.”
― This Side of Paradise
― This Side of Paradise
“As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.”
― The Adding Machine: Selected Essays
― The Adding Machine: Selected Essays
“I'm sure I must have sounded like a fool and a borderline psychotic most of that year, when I talked to people who thought they knew who and where they were at the time ... but looking back, I see that if I wasn't Right, at least I wasn't Wrong, and in that context I was forced to learn from my confusion ... which took awhile, and there's still no proof that what I finally learned was Right, but there's not a hell of a lot of evidence to show that I'm Wrong either.”
― Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist - The Gonzo Letters, Volume II, 1968-1976
― Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist - The Gonzo Letters, Volume II, 1968-1976
“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
― The Nigger of the Narcissus and the Secret Sharer
― The Nigger of the Narcissus and the Secret Sharer
Les’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Les’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Les
Lists liked by Les










