Irvine Welsh Quotes

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

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 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.

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

Can you taste it Bruce? Can you taste the filth, the dirt, the oily blackness of that fossil fuel in our mouth as you choke and gag and spit it out? Do you still hear his voice in your head urging you to eat? Eat, eat eat. Your mother's cries. Do you hear them? You should be Bruce. Because I know that it's never left you alone. Now you can eat what you want to eat. For me, for you, for all the others. Now you can consume to your heart's content or your soul's destruction, whichever comes first. So eat.

To those of us gathered here today, Matthew Connell filled a number of different roles in our lives. Matthew was a son, a brother, a father and a friend. Matthew's last days in his young life were bleak, suffering ones. Yet, we must remember the real Matthew, the loving young man who had a great lust for life. A keen musician, Matthew loved to entertain friends with his guitar playing...
Renton could not make eye contact with Spud, standing next to him in the pew, as nervous laughter gripped him. Matty was the shitest guitarest he'd known, and could only play the Doors' 'Roadhouse Blues' and a few Clash and Status Quo numbers with any sort of proficiency. He tried hard to do the riff from 'Clash City Rockers', but could never quite master it. Nonetheless, Matty loved that Fender Strat. It was the last thing he sold, holding onto it after the amplifier had been flogged off in order to fill his veins with shite. Perr Matty, Renton thought. How well did any of us really know him? How well can anybody really know anybody else?

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.

Fuck you and your First World problems! If every cunt that had taken their first ecky commited adultery by jacksie-rifling the first psycho fucker who smiled at them, not one worthwhile relationship in Britain would still exist!

High cunts are a big fuckin drag when yir feeling like this, because thir too busy enjoying their high tae notice or gie a fuck about your suffering. Whereas the piss-held in the pub wants every cunt tae git as ootay it as he is, the real junky (as opposed tae the casual user who wants a partner-in-crime) doesnae gie a fuck aboot anybody else.

Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

She's so fucking beautiful it don't bear thinking about. I could hardly keep my eyes on the fucking road. I sort of felt like I was wasting time whenever I wasn't looking at her face.

This social worker lassie turns round n gies us a stroppy look. Ah jist smiles bit she looked away aw fuckin nippy likes. Disnae cost nowt tae be social. A social worker thit cannae be fuckin social; that's nae good tae nae cunt, thon. Like a lifeguard thit cannae fuckin swim. Shouldnae be daein that kinday joab.

They filed out into the cold night at closing time, heading for Begbie's place with a carry-out. They'd already spent twelve hours drinking and pontificating about Matty's life and his motivations. In truth, the more reflective of them realised, all their insights pooled and processed, did little to illuminate the cruel puzzle of it all.
They were no wiser now than at the start.

Skinners guts were in turmoil from the beer and curry at the weekend and a viscous, silent eye-stinging killer of a fart slipped out of him, as poignantly weeping as a lover's last farewell, just as the lift stopped at the next floor to let in two men wearing overalls. Everybody suffered in silence. As the workmen got off at the following level, Skinner seized the opportunity, announcing, - That is minging, looking towards the departing workers. He knew that when it came to farting everybody turned into Old Etonian High Court Judges. Men would always be suspected before women and men in working clothes would always be blamed before men in suits. Those were the rules.

From "The Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs

... if yir gaunny git hung fir stealin a sheep ye might as well shag it n aw.

Are you asking me or telling me?

It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element.

[...] 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?

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

Women give more than men; young people more than their elders; people who appear to be of the most modest means seem more generous than the affluent looking.

Whoa it's still coming and I'm thinking now is the time to fall in love now now now but not with the world with that one special her, just do it, just do it now, just change your whole fuckin life in the space of a heartbeat, do it now… but nah… this is just entertainment…

The trick was to consume as quickly as possible; in doing it this way there was a sense that the body could be cheated.

Ah ken the junk gits bad press, but ah think it's barry. It's easy tae criticize something fae outside, but yuv goat tae experience eveything in life, ken? Thinkay how shitey things would huv been for eveycat if Jim Morrison hudnae droaped acid. He widnae broken oan through tae the other side n aw barry tunes wid be shiter as a result ... it aw disnae goaway on skag:it jist disnae bother ye any mair.

Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.

But ah'm hugging Janey and thinking about how much a life can change in the time it takes tae fix up.

You n me. Ah jist think we should split up. A pause. - Ah want tae split. For us tae stoap guan oot thegither.
- But why... She actually touches her chest, touches her heart, and at that moment mine nearly breaks in unison.

Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything.

We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we're all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn't all totally pointless.

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

adjourn for another beer. We

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.

Renton asks the cop: 'But what did ye say tae get him tae come back inside?' The officer replies: 'I just told him that no matter how bad it all seemed right now, it's just part and parcel of being young. That it gets easier.' 'Does it?' Renton asks, and the policeman shakes his head: 'Does it fuck; it gets bleeding worse. All that happens is that the expectations you have of life fall. You just get used to all the shit.' But what if you can't get used to it? The officer shrugs: 'Well, that window's still gonna be there.

Thir no fuckin swaggerin aroond Leith, fuckin well surein thair no. A bunch ay fuckin sheepshaggers wi thair diddy European Cup Winner's Cup, comin doon here, drinkin in oor pubs, chattin up oor... Franco hesitates, looks at Tommy.
Tommy can't resist it. - Sheep?

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.

It's only now that I realize that behaviour always has a context and precedents, it's what you do rather than what you are, although we often never recognise that context or understand what these precedents are.

History repeated itself. The 'don't do the things I did' mantra was tiresome posh. The best way to make sure your children don't grow up as cunts is not to be one yourself - or not to let them SEE you being one. This is easier as a sober artist in Santa Barbara than as an alcoholic jailbird in Leith.

It's like humping Leviathan: a fucking war of all against all, a shag of attrition. Eventually she goes off and I shoot my load and, save for a shaving of egotism, am completely unmoved by the experience. […] Contemplating the girl beneath me, I know that she could never be my friend. Her gasps as she came sounded like mocking laughter, as empty and pointless as I feel inside. Not only have I forgotten her name, I can't remember if I ever asked it or if she bothered telling me. Prabaly not.

It seemed that young people, despite their fundamental decency, now had to buy into a mind-set which made viciousness and treachery come easy.

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

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...

She's lovely and she's with Skinner, and they're probably in love and there's no justice in this world

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

This thought though, is nowhere near sufficient tae stop us fae daein what ah huv tae dae.

The train was nearly twenty minutes late, an excellent performance by British Rail standards.

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'.

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.

Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace

Can barely look in the mirror. I've been way too uncomfortable to try and shave and I've grown a thin, scraggy ginger beard which looks redder and thicker than it is, cause of the spots on my face. The yellowheads are repulsive enough, but it's two big boil-like fuckers on my cheek and forehead that cause the distress. They throb under the surface of my skin like a Peter Hook bassline, hurting my face every time I try to move it.

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

It was a familiar pattern. They would whisperingly condemn his violence with those sour, baleful expressions, until they wanted some cunt sorting out, then he would suddenly become the big hero. Manipulation. He'd discussed all this with Melanie, with his mentor, John Dick, the prison officer. It had suited them all to keep him as he was. It still suits them. He will leave them back here in Edinburgh. They can either shut the door in his face or seize him in a hypocritical embrace, it won't matter; he will be walking away from them all.

Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers ... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life ... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

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.

It's easy to love, or for that matter hate, somebody in their absence, somebody we don't really know...

Two choices; one: tough it oot, back in the room, two: phone that cunt Forrester and go tae Muirhoose, get fucked aboot and ripped oaf wi some crap gear. Nae contest.

In twenty minutes it wis: - Muirhoose pal? tae the driver oan the 32 bus and quiveringly stickin ma forty-five pence intae the the box.

Any port in a storm, and it's raging in here behind ma face.

The fact that you use the term "cunt" in the same breath as "sexist", shows that you display the same muddled, fucked-up thinking oan this issue as you do oan everything else.

He's going on and on, and I can't be bothered. I just can't be fuckin well arsed saying something like: Solaris shites all over 2001, and then listening to him arguing vehemently against it. Or, alternatively, waiting for him to say it, and then being expected to argue engingly, as if to agree, even if we do, is a sign that we're effete proofs. I can't be bothered with it and I can't even be bothered to tell him that I can'be be bothered.

...that fucker defines cuntishness.

Might huv ehs ma's brains, cause ay his heid taperin backwards intae a point like a fuckin alien.

There's nae reasoning wi some cats. You say 'reason', they mew 'treason'. Ken?

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.

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.

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.

Now I'll be left alone, and that's all you want, all you crave out of life: to be left alone while you get on with the business of interfering with others. In

Kev shuddered. This was crazy, but there it was; his name, spelt by an insect...
- Boab? Is that really you? Fuckin hell! Eh, buzz twice fir aye, once fir naw.
Two buzzes.
- Did eh, what's his name, did God dae this?
Two buzzes.
- Whit the fuck ur ye gaunny dae?
Frantic buzzing.
- Sorry Boab... kin ah git ye anything? Scran, likesay?

He was a very arrogant young man, so full of himself.

Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life.

Analysing novels meant ripping oot their soul and it destroyed my enjoyment of them. Ah couldnae allow masel tae be trained tae thing that way. Only by refusing tae study literature was ah able tae maintain ma passion for it.

Then she put it back in the bag and pulled out the bone-handled razor. Opened the blade. How light and lethal it felt in her hand. Allison rolled her sleeve up over her biceps and cut across the vein and artery. Warm blood splashed onto the tiled floor.
Mum...
It felt good, like the pain in her was leaking out with the blood, like a terrible pressure was being removed. It was soothing. She slid down the wall.
Mum...
But as she was there, things quickly changed; there was too much blood.

This internal sea. The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads ay poisonous flotsam and jetsam ... that poison is diluted by the sea, but once the ocean rolls out, it leaves the shite behind, inside ma body. It takes as well as gives, it washes away ma endorphins, ma pain resistance centres; they take a long time tae come back.

It seems to go beyond our personal junk circumstances; a brilliant metaphor for our times.

1926. The General Strike in Leith. You read all that and what they said then and you pure see what the Labour Party used to believe in - freedom for the ordinary cat.

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

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.

She's quite a nice looking lassie or she wid be if she didnae look shite.

… you were better making history than studying it.

You just want tae fuck up on drugs so that everyone'll think how deep and fucking complex you are. It's pathetic, and fucking boring.

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

Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.

When you hurt some cunt […] it's you duty to enjoy it, otherwise you've done it for fuck all, it means nothing

-Fiona, this is my mate, Frank Begbie. Or Franco. Or Beggars. Or the Beggar Boy. Or the Generalissmo. Or Psychotic Bullying Prick.

Ah felt a paralysis ay emotion as time stretched out. A pervading numbness was setting in, like a dentist's anaesthetic, spreading through ma body.

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.

Ah walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when you've been away. It's as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it.

Ah'm sittin in the hotel bar waitin oan Fiona. Thinkin aboot her heart-melting smile and that sexy, concentrated frown when she evaluates books and the comments made by lecturers. Whenever she comes into a room, ma spirits soar. What ah feel is delight, pure and simple. Our life is all passionate kisses and soft wells of laughter. Ah love watchin her in class; even though we're shaggin, it's still great tae just look at her.

I like the idea of a black sun; like a black hole in space, sucking everything into darkness, where we came from and where we're heading

Leave it man. Squirrel's botherin nae cunt likesay! Ah hate it the wey Mark's intae hurtin animals ... it's wrong man. Ye cannae love yirsel if ye want tae hurt things like that ... ah mean ... what hope is thir? The squirrel's likes fuckin lovely. He's daein his ain thing. He's free. That's mibble what Rents cannae stand. The squirrel's free man.

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.

It was all that vain, egotistical insincerity of self-reproach. By blaming ourselves we take away the right of others to do the same

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

Drugs are always fun.

There's some kids playing out in the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life.

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.

If only he loved himself as much as he loved the rest of the world.

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.

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.

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

Ah wis gaunny say thit Tommy hud a choice; wee Maria disnae. Aw that would huv done wis precipitate an argument aboot whair choice began and ended. How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete? Wish tae fuck ah knew. Wish tae fuck ah knew anything.

Cunts that try and psychoanalyse the fucked-up miss the crucial point: sometimes ye jist dae it cause it's thaire n that's wey ye are.

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.