Bad craziness or no, Hunter Thompson is a master wordsmith; some favorites:

"Every now and then when life gets complicated the only solution is to load up on heinous chemicals and drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. "

and this one:

"[In the 60's] 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 -- the 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 -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Damn, but that boy can write.

Chris