Top 100 Irvine Welsh Quotes
#1. I've read a lot of Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting, Glue - he's written some beauties.
Andrew Flintoff
#2. It wis like auld times, but in a sense that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed.
Irvine Welsh
#3. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#4. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#5. -Fiona, this is my mate, Frank Begbie. Or Franco. Or Beggars. Or the Beggar Boy. Or the Generalissmo. Or Psychotic Bullying Prick.
Irvine Welsh
#6. His friends will decline in their numbers as his needs increase. The inverse, or perverse, mathematics ay life.
Irvine Welsh
#7. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#8. I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.
Irvine Welsh
#9. I'm always watching people over a short time frame, putting them in an extreme position. Sometimes you don't see the humanity in a person because the time frame is so short and the circumstance so extreme.
Irvine Welsh
#10. I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
Irvine Welsh
#11. When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies.
Irvine Welsh
#12. I reach into my bag and I pull out my claw hammer.
Irvine Welsh
#13. It was, as the song said, 'call to arms music,' and seemed to have little to do with Scotland and New Year. It was fighting music. Stevie didn't want to fight anyone. But it was also beautiful music.
Irvine Welsh
#14. I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribing the dogs.
Irvine Welsh
#15. He feels the bleakness crawling into his skull; Franco breaths in steadily, trying to tune in all out, that pressure on your brain, eroding focus, diverting the flow of thought down old ruinous canals...
Irvine Welsh
#16. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#17. Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.
Irvine Welsh
#18. The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel.
Irvine Welsh
#19. What worries me is the professionalism of everything.
Irvine Welsh
#20. Money gives you the luxury of not caring about it. You can affect to find it crass and vulgar, but see how crass and vulgar it is when there's none of it in your pocket.
Irvine Welsh
#21. They mean well, and they mean well tae me, but there's nae way under the sun that they can
appreciate what ah feel, what ah need.
Protect me from those who wish tae help us.
Irvine Welsh
#22. His mind raced through past horrors experienced first hand and from the accounts of others. He mentally flipped through a grim database which contained everything from vegan flatmates to psychotic pimps.
Irvine Welsh
#23. Schopenhauer was right: Life has to be about disillusionment stumbling inexorably towards the totally fucked.
Irvine Welsh
#24. There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction ... no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.
Irvine Welsh
#27. I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.
Irvine Welsh
#29. Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything.
Irvine Welsh
#30. I'm more of a warrior than you'll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie.
Irvine Welsh
#31. -The renegade robots are now long dead, the metal ones rusted, the human ones bled.
Irvine Welsh
#32. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#33. we're not human any more. We've slipped out of our skins like lizards, shedding not just our pasts, but our futures.
Irvine Welsh
#34. People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.
Irvine Welsh
#35. Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.
Irvine Welsh
#36. A lot of men are wankers cause they don't mind bad sex, but for a woman bad sex is far worse than no sex at all.
Irvine Welsh
#38. I wouldn't care about hurting myself or anybody else. Because I know now that doing things doesn't hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them
Irvine Welsh
#39. It should be the likes ay us that agitate for change, but aw we dae is drugs.
Irvine Welsh
#41. It's all okay, it's all beautiful; but ah fear that this internal sea is gaunnae subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in ma body.
Irvine Welsh
#42. The first job of a writer is to be honest.
Irvine Welsh
#43. This thought though, is nowhere near sufficient tae stop us fae daein what ah huv tae dae.
Irvine Welsh
#44. Good luck to progressive candidates in U.S. Senate elections against the usual rich, white, racist, women-hating pricks they run against.
Irvine Welsh
#45. It seemed that young people, despite their fundamental decency, now had to buy into a mind-set which made viciousness and treachery come easy.
Irvine Welsh
#46. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#47. Life is a dynamic rather than a static process, and when we don't change it kills us. It's not running away, it's moving on.
Irvine Welsh
#48. Everything in the street today seems soft focus.
Irvine Welsh
#49. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#50. Fuck that: take shagging n peeve oot ay the equation n yir left wi the sqare root ay swee fuck all!
Irvine Welsh
#51. We're all like the slaves in the fields now, putting on the front that says 'Everything's fine, boss' while we worry about how to make ends meet.
Irvine Welsh
#52. Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.
Irvine Welsh
#53. Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.
Irvine Welsh
#54. Without this kickstart to my day, I'd be lost. A day without a morning run is a day you fumble through, rather than one you attack.
Irvine Welsh
#55. The politics of the last twenty years in Britain are liars' politics. The problem is we are ruled by the weak and the small-minded, who are too stupid to know that they are weak and small-minded.
Irvine Welsh
#57. But ah'm hugging Janey and thinking about how much a life can change in the time it takes tae fix up.
Irvine Welsh
#58. Everytime ye go to jail, the probability ay ye ever becoming free fae that kind of life decreases. It's the same every time ye go back tae smack. Ye decrease yir chances of ay ever bein able tae dae withoot it.
Irvine Welsh
#59. Another cunt oaf ma fuckin Christmas caird list.
-Didnae ken ye kept a list, likesay, Franco...
-Every cunt keeps a fuckn list. He taps his heid,
-A Christmas caird list, n that cunt's fuckin well oaf it!
Irvine Welsh
#60. no matter how early you rise or how late you turn in, you never see that point where light begins or the first bruise of darkness bleeds in under its fragile skin; the beauty, and the scary, unfathomable wisdom of transition.
Irvine Welsh
#62. But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist. And we cannot move.
Irvine Welsh
#63. On the issue of drugs, we wir classical liberals, vehemently opposed tae state intervention in any form.
Irvine Welsh
#64. But ah cannae even endorse these sentiments as they are at best peripheral tae the moment.
Irvine Welsh
#65. The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.
Irvine Welsh
#66. The disease which racked his body was a sweetheart compared to the more obscure one that possessed his sick mind.
Irvine Welsh
#67. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#68. I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.
Irvine Welsh
#69. Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.
Irvine Welsh
#70. Ah sortay jist laugh whin some cats say that racism's an English thing and we're aw Jock Tamson's bairn up here ... it's likesay pure shite man, gadges talkin through their erses.
Irvine Welsh
#71. Ah took a pish oan the cunt, then ah felt bad aboot Albo's cel so ah sais tae him oan the wey oot, cunt's only went n pished hissel but, eh.
Irvine Welsh
#72. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#73. The Victim was a chronic fuck-up. People Like her always seemed to hang out with The Poisonous Cunt. In turn, she kept their self-esteem low and made sure that they stayed in psychic immiseration. She was a curator of dead souls.
Irvine Welsh
#74. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#75. As if the physical proximity can make up for the emotional distance.
Irvine Welsh
#76. Her mum thought gourmet cooking was putting a load of fish fingers under the grill instead of in the frying pan.
Irvine Welsh
#77. If every cunt had a ride whin they hud a heidache, thir widnae be as much fuckin trouble in the world.
Irvine Welsh
#78. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#79. The trick was to consume as quickly as possible; in doing it this way there was a sense that the body could be cheated.
Irvine Welsh
#80. So she's wipin spunk offay her face, gaun aw fuckin panicky, Whae wis that, wis that ma dad?
Fuckin durty pervert sneakin up oan cunts like that, ah goes.
So she goes aw that fuckin ice-cauld, frigid, huffey wey, but fuck her, ye need a wee bit ay fuckin romance at Christmas.
Irvine Welsh
#81. Johnny wis a junky as well as a dealer. Ye hud tae go a wee bit further up the ladder before ye found a dealer whae didnae use. We called Johnny 'Mother Superior' because ay the length ay time he'd hud his habit.
Irvine Welsh
#82. Jim has a nice life, he considers, but sometimes Frank has a hell of a lot more fun.
Irvine Welsh
#84. ... if yir gaunny git hung fir stealin a sheep ye might as well shag it n aw.
Irvine Welsh
#85. Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.
Irvine Welsh
#86. Mental burds; needy, crazy, strength-sappin n soul-destroyin, aye, but mair often than not barry fuckin rides.
Irvine Welsh
#87. We don't really communicate [ ... ]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.
Irvine Welsh
#88. Might huv ehs ma's brains, cause ay his heid taperin backwards intae a point like a fuckin alien.
Irvine Welsh
#89. [...] but it's aw hate, hate, hate wi some punters, and whair does it git us likesay, man? Whair the fuck does it git us?
Irvine Welsh
#90. His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.
Irvine Welsh
#91. Any cunt withoot the virus could git run ower the morn. That's the wey ye huv tae look at it. Cannae jist cancel the gig. The show must go oan.
Irvine Welsh
#93. So this is how cunts that never shag fuckin well live. A life oy impotence, resentment, anger and frustration; nae fuckin exuberance in life, forced tae become an Internet troll or a miserable drunk in a boozer.
Irvine Welsh
#94. How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?
Irvine Welsh
#95. 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.
Irvine Welsh
#96. I'd always done a lot of sniffing glue as a kid. I was very interested in glue, and then I went to lager and speed, and I drifted into heroin because as a kid growing up everybody told me, 'don't smoke marijuana, it will kill you'.
Irvine Welsh
#97. It was all that vain, egotistical insincerity of self-reproach. By blaming ourselves we take away the right of others to do the same
Irvine Welsh
#98. Was he an alcoholic? What was that? Someone who drinks all the time? Who can't say no to a drink? Who drinks in secret? Somebody who anticipates the next drink before he's finished with the one in front of him?
Irvine Welsh
#99. Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.
Irvine Welsh
#100. When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.
Irvine Welsh
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