Ralph Steadman

Ralph Steadman (born 15 May 1936 in Wallasey) is a British cartoonist and caricaturist who is best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson.

Ralph Steadman (Right)
I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.

Sourced

The Joke's Over (2006)

• ' Don't write, Ralph. You'll bring shame on your family. ' -- Hunter S. Thompson --
  • Epigraph, p. ixx

• Maybe he is the Mark Twain of the late twentieth century. Time will sort the bastard out and I leave it to others more qualified than me to assess and appraise his monumental literary legacy.
  • Introduction, p. 3

• Americans love DON'T. Thou shalt not. The bedrock of received knowledge - the Ten Commandments. The God fearing pioneers who still had a long way to go. GO! DONT GO! GO. FUCK YOU GOD! We're on our way...
  • The Kentucky Derby, p. 7

• I was in a slightly befuddled state by this time and the potent combination of watery beer and whiskey was bringing on a severe attack of drawing, as always happens when I start seeing unusual faces through a haze of controlled drinking. My body becomes a protective casing and lets me observe through the two keyholes on the front of my head.
  • The Kentucky Derby, p. 14

• 'Happiness is a Small Politician' - my mantra then and forever more.
  • The America's Cup, p. 36

• I don't think that at the time, or now, come to think of it, I gave a damn. Foolishly, I wanted truth and idealism, but there was none to be had.
  • The America's Cup, p. 36

• Each boat is worth the price of a new university and they are watched by gin-soaked yachting types, male and female, in captain's hats lounging in deckchairs inside Perspex covered enclosures at the front of yet more expensive, floating country houses representing nothing more than elegantly vulgar expressions of dodgy wealth. The America's Cup.
  • The America's Cup, p. 45

• Beware of privilege. It stinks of rotten rotten fish heads, many of which were lapping the shore beneath the jetties.
  • The America's Cup, p. 47

• By this time trapped inside the drug's reverie I could have sprayed out Michelangelo's Last Judgement on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A yacht would be a beggar's handcart by comparison.
  • The America's Cup, p. 55

• Those Fear and Loathing drawings were only possible for me because of the America's Cup six months earlier, which injected the the drawings with the eerie sense of being there to record the sensations. It was a regurgitation, a psycho-artistic vomit - a creative, cathartic cleansing of my inner being.
  • The America's Cup, p. 63

• It was a carefree period and we took to it like genuine lowlife.
  • The America's Cup, p. 65

• Let me say it here and now. For all Hunter's mindless self-indulgence, which is legendary and crude, he always impressed me with his blind, selfless urge to cut out the crony bestiality of modern society and the political economy that scarred the era.
  • Fear And Loathing, p. 67

• What actually happened was that Rolling Stone paid me fifteen hundred dollars for the use of all the drawings - about twenty four of them - and then offered to buy the originals from me, which my agent urged 'was a good move!'. He sold the whole damn treasure trove to Jann Wenner for the princely sum of sixty dollars per drawing. I rue the day I let him convince me.
  • Fear And Loathing, p. 76

• Where is Winnie the Pooh without it's illustrations?
  • Fear And Loathing, p. 77

• I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.
  • Fear And Loathing, p. 81

• Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.
  • Watergate Follies, p. 98

• Whores get bow-legged and bankers get mean, which is strange when you think that that if whores get bow-legged, bankers should get generous, but they never do.
  • Watergate Follies, p. 110

• Today we are sacks of shit bundled into flying tubes with a security warning secreted inside every orifice.
  • Rumble In The Jungle: Ali v Foreman, p. 133

• We thought that we had suffered all our wars and now we could enjoy a time of peace and tranquillity. However, people never learn and a newer type of war was to envelope us. We seem doomed to repeat all our mistakes and find that we are being groomed, and doomed, by the legions of war, Odin's messengers, who would have us believe that aggression is the only way forward. Now we live in a war zone, the entire world.
  • Fear And Loathing On The Road To Hollywood, p. 157

• Hunter Thompson wasn't Joseph Conrad, Jimmy Carter wasn't Harry Trueman. But strangely, Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon.
  I'm no Pablo Picasso but there's no harm in straining. After all, the charm of any activity is in the trying and so rarely in the finished article.
  • The Filming Of Where The Buffalo Roam, p. 171

• One can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.
  • Own Goals, p. 314

Americans live with the certain knowledge that the source of their greatness has not yet been released.

• At least my mural of Leonardo da Vinci still exists on the wall of their offices, which were subsequently taken over by Expedia. They had the wall insured.
  • Own Goals, p. 315

• America is ripe for lies and lethargy. The pure mountain air is going and gone. It is a huge burden and a sadness for us all.
  • The Last Trip To Woody Creek, p. 371

• Americans live with the certain knowledge that the source of their greatness has not yet been released.
  • The Last Trip To Woody Creek, p. 376