Raoul Duke: 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.
Raoul Duke: 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:
Raoul Duke: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals?
Dr. Gonzo: Did you say something?
Raoul Duke: Hm? Never mind. It's your turn to drive.
Raoul Duke: No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.

 

Raoul Duke: You can turn your back on a person, but, never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.

 

Raoul Duke: [Talking about the song "One Toke Over the Line"] One toke, you fool!

 

Raoul Duke: You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.

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.

 

Raoul Duke: Bazooko's Circus is what the world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich.

 

Raoul Duke: Look, there's two women fucking a polar bear.

 

Raoul Duke: If the pigs were gathering in Vegas, I felt the drug culture should be represented as well. And there was a certain bent appeal in the notion of running a savage burn in one Las Vegas, and then just wheeling across town and checking into another. Me and a thousand ranking cops from all over America. Why not? Move confidently into their midst

 

Raoul Duke: A drug person can learn to handle such things as seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth. But no one should be asked to deal with this trip.

 

Hotel Clerk: Can I call you a cab?
Police Chief: Sure, and I'll call you a cocksucker!

 

Raoul Duke: We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... 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 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.

 

Dr. Gonzo: Let's give the boy a lift.
Raoul Duke: What? No. We can't stop here. This is bat country.

 

Raoul Duke: Let's get down to brass tacks. How much for the ape?

 

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

 

Dr. Gonzo: Sounds like big trouble. You're going to need plenty of legal advice before this thing is over. As your attorney, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special messages. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of L.A. for at least 48 hours.

 

Raoul Duke: What was I doing here? What was the meaning of this trip? Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind? Or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story? Who are these people, these faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas, and sweet Jesus, there were a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, still humping the American dream, that vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.

 

Raoul Duke: Dogs fucked the Pope... no fault of mine.

 

Raoul Duke: You people voted for Hubert Humphrey...and you killed Jesus.