Stories I Tell Myself Quotes

“Hunter was superstitious about his actions. He called himself a Road Man for the Lords of Karma. He used that expression several times, most recently the night before he died. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I know he wasn’t joking. He took seriously the idea that evil actions bear evil fruit, and that this is not a matter of psychology, but is a universal law. How he reconciled this with the harm that he inflicted on people around him, on my mother, on me, on countless women, on cabbies, bartenders, waiters, editors, hotel maids, journalists, audience members, and anyone else who encountered his rage, I don’t know. Maybe it all balanced out, the good he did and the harm he did, because he did a tremendous amount of good. He also spoke and wrote of reincarnation. Maybe he was serious about this. Maybe he feared he would be reincarnated as a three-legged dog with the mange in a garbage slum in Brazil, as he once wrote. Or maybe knew he would return as a crazy bodhisattva, to tell the truth and shake us out of our complacency. It is said that when the Tibetan Dalai Lama dies, he is reincarnated not long afterward somewhere else in Tibet. A group of high lamas goes in search of him, based on visions received during meditation, and when they find a candidate, they present him with things owned by the previous Dalai Lama mixed in with other objects. The true reincarnation identifies unerringly those objects that had once belonged to him. Perhaps someday I will encounter a young boy who will recognize this medallion as his, and then I will tell him all about who he had been and all that he did.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter was a deeply sentimental man, and like most sentimentalists, he was a pack rat, because such people, and I am one, confer on objects the essence of a person, place, or event. They are tangible reminders of the good and significant, and they are more than simply reminders, they are talismans, objects consecrated by memory. They have magical properties and they are not to be lightly disposed of or given away, because in losing them we lose a part of our memory, and memories are the bricks of the houses of our selves, our lives.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“It was his respect for the wisdom and for Hunter, by his ceremonious conduct, that inspired reverence in us, a sense that something great was transpiring, that Hunter’s spirit was transforming into something timeless and grand, and we were here to witness it.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“From his writing he seems to have had an affinity for certain aspects of Buddhism, but one of the central pillars of Buddhism—acceptance—was not one of them. On the contrary, he was a lifelong advocate and practitioner of changing his reality to suit his wishes.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“There would be a lot of roaring and yelling, blood and excitement (he had a tremendously high pain threshold, but a very low screaming threshold) while the wound was tended to, and then he would settle down.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter gradually lost the ability to sustain the necessary concentration to write, almost certainly because of the cocaine and booze. He wasn’t a binge cokehead. Hunter snorted a little bit all day, probably to balance the whiskey, but I’m sure it impaired his ability to concentrate.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Just as in Glenwood, his doctor decided to put him into a drug-induced coma to minimize the impact of the withdrawal. They loaded him up with lorazepam and put him to sleep. The doctor gave him alcohol intravenously, but it wasn’t enough. Could they increase the alcohol dose, we asked? Apparently not. The highest concentration available for IV use would not be enough for Hunter.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“I learned that some cops lie. This was a brutal and profoundly disturbing realization: Those in control are not necessarily trustworthy. More importantly, authority is not necessarily to be obeyed, and certainly not feared. There is always a way to challenge authority, either in the courtroom or in the media or in the voting booth. He has done all of them many times, and usually successfully. In other words, he believes that it is possible to change a situation for the better, even in the face of entrenched authority. So what am I saying? I am proud of this man. I respect and admire his vitality, his courage, his insight, his perverse resistance to security and predictability, his deliberate disregard for propriety, his ability to make me see and think differently. Ultimately, I love and respect him because he really lives,”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“the only way that I would have any peace with my father, the only way I would have any kind of satisfying relationship, was if I made an effort to move toward him, rather than wait for him to stop or at least moderate his craziness with me. At the same time I understood that this meant accepting, on a deep and real level, that he was not going to change. He would not stop drinking every day, he would not stop snorting cocaine, he would not restrain himself from going into rages, demanding to be the center of attention, and having unrealistic expectations of those around him. He would not call me more often, or write me more letters, or tell me he loved me. What he had been, what he was, he would continue to be.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter and I grew older, yet his women stayed about the same age.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter often quoted in his writing a bit of political wisdom, “Never apologize, never explain,”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“One of the most difficult paradoxes in Hunter’s character was the presence of both a strong, genuine caring for others, and a profound self-centeredness.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter actually did go to the treatment center in Florida for a few days, but then rebelled and escaped with the help of a friend. Laila left him for good shortly thereafter. That was the beginning of a long dialogue over the years between Laila and me about Hunter as an alcoholic, which put Hunter’s behavior, and mine, into a context that I could start to understand.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“I had just a few rules: don’t wake Hunter up, don’t touch the guns, and put the tools away when I used them.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“What is so remarkable now, as I look back, is that she very likely was drunk, and so was he. Hunter had been drinking heavily and consistently since he was a teenager, and by the mid-’70s my mother was drinking heavily as well. In retrospect, it would be naïve to think that those vicious fights did not proceed directly from a long night of boozing and the ingestion of who knows what that stripped away all self-control and perspective.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“. I began to realize that Hunter was interested in winning, not understanding. I began to suspect that his misunderstanding was intentional, more than that—malicious. He was trying to break her down. He didn’t care what she was trying to say, he cared about breaking her.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“Hunter was trying to teach me responsibility through consequences, but I can’t find a way to understand the cruelty, because it felt like more than punishment.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“After I had graduated from college, he said the only reason to attend college was to have four years to read.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

“He needed cheerleaders.”
― Juan F. Thompson, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson