Irvine Welsh Quotes

It wis like auld times, but in a sense that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed.

Love does not exist, it's like religion, the state wants you to believe in that kind of crap so they can control you, and f**k your head up.

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.

When two people were in love you had to leave them to it. Especially when you weren't in love and wished that you were. That could embarrass. That could hurt.

How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?

Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

Are you asking me or telling me?

What worries me is the professionalism of everything.

How did it make you feel?

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

Thir must be less tae life than this

Most middle-class people I know don't really live like me. Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.

I mean Filth is the best British film since Trainspotting. It might even be better. I keep watching it back to back with Trainspotting to try and work out which is the best. I can't split them.

People love talking about their jobs. Take them out, buy them lunch or take them for a beer and they'll talk about their job, provided they know that you're going to respect their anonymity.

I can't really say - if I've run out of ideas until I've had my next set of ideas.

You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

I'm quite comfortable now with being misunderstood. I don't really feel the need either to pander to it or to refute it. Just go on, and do what I've got to do.

The celebration of death is not a good thing. Fetishizing death isn't a good thing. You should be celebrating life and enjoying it and all that.

It's all been quite a revitalizing process for me, being out there in the States. It wouldn't have happened without Trainspotting.

When you're in your twenties, it's the last time you have the chance to experiment with multiple identities, to decide who you're going to be in life.

Here ah am in the junky's limbo; too sick tae sleep, too tired tae stay awake. A twilight zone ay the senses where nothing's real except the crushing, omnipresent misery n pain in your mind n body.

How stagnant and tepid the whole British political scene is now is just beyond belief.

You have to let people express themselves in the way that they need to express themselves. You have to express yourself in any way possible, provided you're prepared to live with the consequences.

I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.

The subsequent success levels, all the other stuff [after Trainspotting], it comes at a much higher level.

In America I think we need to move towards a social democracy, European-style basically, and I think that in Britain we do as well.

There's no one way of telling a story or looking at reality, so I think any device is up for grabs as long as it fits in with the tone.

Just lock myself in a room, stop answering emails, stop answering the phone and I come out with something.

[Margaret Thatcher] was the invisible hand behind it. Without that, there'd be no Trainspotting and no Filth.

It was quite life-affirming, for me, that I felt hat kind of pity for [Margaret Thatcher], because I didn't think I ever would.

I've always felt really good about England. I've always felt really, really good about Britain.

I think UKIP [ UK Independence Party] and the BNP [British National Party] are very, very English concerns. If they gather strength they're going to add to this schism between Scotland and England.

As a writer, you play this daft game with yourself - you're constantly looking for distractions, anything to stop you from writing, but you're constantly fighting the distractions to write as well.

In America, we've got to get back to these base principles of what democracy is.

I think of the women I know, and very few of them are obsessed with shopping, or with getting a guy - they want their own thing, they have their own network going on.

When I go to places and do book tours, I don't really like doing traditional bookshops. It's nice to walk people through something instead of just standing up in a bookstore.

In some ways, you can say that at any time in any writer's career: 'He might have run out of ideas.'

You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.

Living like this is a full-time business.

Now most people would put this doon tae experience, ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.

When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again.

Ah remember walkin along Princes Street wi Spud, we both hate walkin along that hideous street, deadened by tourists and shoppers, the twin curse ay modern capitalism.

Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror.

But even Es and cocaine, over the years they blow holes in your brain, rob you of your memories, your past. Which is fair enough, convenient even.

I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribing the dogs.

The '90s was a decade of mundane market-consumer nothingness where there was nothing coming up from the streets you just had someone in an office deciding what was cool.

When you grow up in a place, you always think it's mundane. Then you travel around and live in different places, and you realise that you've got it the wrong way 'round.

It unsettles the women as they have dropped their disguise and are now giant praying mantis with blonde and auburn wigs, lipstick smeared on those deadly pincher-like insect jaws.