Irvine Welsh Quotes

Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.

Everything in the street today seems soft focus.

Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them.

don't let jesus in. AA is just one obsession replaced with another

His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.

The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.

I'm not running away, I'm moving on.

I wanted to capture the excitement of house music, almost like a four-four beat, and the best way to do that was to use a language that was rhythmic and performative.

Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know.

You can't lie to your soul.

The books that are really valuable are the books that evoke a sense of place.

Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.

I grew up in what was not so much a familyas a genetic disaster.

I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.

I can't stand still; I find it very difficult to sit around and do nothing. I've got to have projects on the go because the devil makes work for idle hands. I've got to be going forward all the time.

I'd always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn't getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel.

Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.

Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as I struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life

Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books.

There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society.

It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.

I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships.

When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

You can't just have stuff that is free and escapist, you have to have stuff that is confrontational as well. You need stuff that is mystical but you need the realism too.

There's nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved.

I've always got a book in my hands, a novel in my hands. The more I get into film, the more paranoid I get that I'm going to stop seeing things.

The first job of a writer is to be honest.

We made the world uninhabitable for ourselves and it can only be inhabited by robots and androids.

I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.

Most people in the West are not politicized. They're the most simplistic consumers - they're animals, basically.

You write people as human beings first and then the gender specific stuff second.

These days you can't write anybody off. If anybody is a right-wing populist, you can't write them off now because that is the rising tide of our time.

I think that the Brexit negotiations have to be a big thing that determines the democratic fight-back and galvanizes democratic Europe again against this rising tide of nationalism.

I don't think that the Scots are happy to drift into Britain becoming the poorest of the poor, sub-American 51st state.

I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

Conservatives are giving up on democracy because it's not efficient. They want an autocratic regime.

I think that a lot of people on the left are gonna get tired of fighting gun laws, so they're gonna embrace gun culture. I think when that happens, you've got serious, serious trouble.

If you have no drugs, then you have revolution, and then drugs will be the only thing stopping that.

I think [Ecstasy] was a really good stab. It wasn't my strongest book or my strongest material, but they wanted to make a kinda "rave culture" movie.

[Ecstasy] had its flaws, but again it was shot on a low budget, and they did well. It's not in the same league as Filth.

I can see why the Russians love Robert Burns, I think that Russians and Koreans have a very similar outlook to Scots.

You've got first-generation Americans here who are going to be poorer than their parents. That's never happened in the States before, and it's going to have massive social repercussions here.

The readers get younger all the time, and we're getting older.

If there's very strong civic unrest you can see a strong party of the Right emerging, whether it's UKIP [The UK Independence Party] or an even further-right party.

I'm not really interested in courting controversy, but I am interested in exploring issues that other people would deem to be controversial.

If I stop working and publishing, and TV, and film and all that, I would be dead within a couple of weeks. I don't really have that kind of off-switch.