It’s hard to face the truth, but I suppose you yourself realize that if you’d had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now. No such luck.
Now a lot of people say to me, “Hey, P.J., you like to drive fast. Why not join a responsible organization, such as the Sports Car Club of America, and enjoy participation in sports car racing? That way you could drive as fast as you wish while still engaging in a well-regulated spectator sport that is becoming more popular each year.” No thanks. In the first place, if you ask me, those guys are a bunch of tweedy old barf mats who like to talk about things like what necktie they wore to Alberto Ascari’s funeral. And in the second place, they won’t let me drive drunk. They expect me to go out there and smash into things and roll over on the roof and catch fire and burn to death when I’m sober. They must think I’m crazy. That stuff scares me. I have to get completely shit-faced to even think about driving fast. How can you have a lot of exciting thrills when you’re so terrified that you wet yourself all the time? That’s not fun. It’s just not fun to have exciting thrills when you’re scared. Take the heroes of the Iliad for instance – they really had some exciting thrills, and were they scared? No. They were drunk. Every chance they could get. And so am I, and I’m not going out there and have a horrible car wreck until somebody brings me a cocktail.