Irvine Welsh Quotes

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

Franco's voice is something tae hear, it's like wi it bein Hogmanay, he's absorbed just the right amount ay alcohol n good vibes and they intersect at this wonderous vector as he briefly becomes something else, this force ay grace and soul. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

The best way ah knew tae strike a chord without compromising too much tae the sickening hypocrisy, perversely peddled as decency, which fills the room, is tae stick tae the clichés. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Increasingly, life seems fractured, as if his past had been lived by someone else. It isn't just that the place he now resides in and the people around him are poles apart, it's like he himself is an entirely different person. The overriding obsessions and foibles of the man he'd once been now feel utterly ludicrous to the current resident of his mind and body. The only bridge is rage; when angered he can taste his old self. But in California, the way he is currently living his life, few things can vex him to that extent. But that's over there. ~ Irvine Welsh

It's easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt's got shite fir blood. ~ Irvine Welsh

Square go then smart cunt! ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Poor Spud's too pished tae pick up the vibe but, n he's still guan on:
- Naw bit that wis amazing, see if ah could sing like you, Franco –
- Shut the fuck up, Begbie says wi soft menace. Nicksy looks ower tae me wi a fraught, raised brow.
- But ah'm jist sayin – Spud pleads.
- Ah sais tae fuckin well shut it! Right!
Spud falls silent, as does the rest ay the room. We all instantly understand how Begbie sees that this wee fragment ay beauty in his soul has been exposed, and how even through his ain ego and the flattery received, he looks on it as a potential weakness, something that might one day compromise him.
- It's jist fuckin singin, right. ~ Irvine Welsh

No ambition but to use up the big wages on more drink and more hopeless horses. ~ Irvine Welsh

You can't lie to your soul. ~ Irvine Welsh

Fuckin failures in a country of failures. Its nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant healthy society to be colonised by. No..we are ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wis the shite thev got. Ah hate the Scots. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won't hear that noise. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Disnae matter if it's Mickey Platini or Franco Begbie, they will aw just have tae wait. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

Ye see, Rab, it's due to the way we feel about our arseholes. We now believe, as a species, if our soul is located anywhere in our bodies, it's up our arses. That's where it all goes. It makes sense. That's why we're obsessed with anal jokes, anal sex, anal hobbies...the arsehole - not the brain, not space - is the last frontier. That's what makes us revolutionaries. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

The trouble with people like him is that they think that they can brush off people like me. Like I was nothing. They don't understand the type of world we're living in now, all those menaced souls clamouring for attention and recognition. ~ Irvine Welsh

The disease which racked his body was a sweetheart compared to the more obscure one that possessed his sick mind. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

Perversity and obstinacy are integral tae the Scottish character. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

They start a tickling fight, laughing hysterically, and then they're necking again. Nicksy registers that his Scottish friend and the Bird With the Big Hair have adopted that arrogant 'look-at-us-we've-just-invented-sex' demeanor of people who're fucking after a long hiatus ~ Irvine Welsh

We tend to be rather murky little ponds, containing many layers of suspended dirt and grime and our greatest depths are stirred by the strangest of currents. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

We were slowly, but irrevocably, coming apart. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

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

We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Good luck to progressive candidates in U.S. Senate elections against the usual rich, white, racist, women-hating pricks they run against. ~ Irvine Welsh

adjourn for another beer. We ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

The games are always been played, and no one plays the games like me. You just have to be the best.
And I usually am. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares".
Bernard's Poem:

Did you see her on the telly the other day
good family entertainment the tabloids say

But when you're backstage
at your new faeces audition
you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition

She was never a singer
a comic or a dancer
I cant say I was sad
when I found out she had cancer

Great Britain's earthy northern
comedy queen
takes the rand, understand
from the racist Boer regime

So now her cells are fucked
and thats just tough titty
I remember her act
that I caught back in Sun City

She went on and on about
'them from the trees
with different skull shapes
from the likes of you and me'

Her Neo-Nazi spell
it left me fucking numb
the Boers lapped it up with zeal
so did the British ex-pat scum

But what goes round
comes round they say
so welcome to another dose
of chemotherapy

And for my part
it's time to be upfront
so fuck off and die
you carcinogenic cunt. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

Awareness is seventy percent of the solution. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

Spud has two expressions: totally-scoobied-as-to-what-the-fuck's-going-on and the constantly-on-the-verge-of-tears look he is currently deploying. Assailed with self pity and self loathing, regarding his folly in sitting next to Begbie, he glances around. - Aye ... it's bad, like say, he concedes, wondering how he can manoeuvre into another seat. ~ Irvine Welsh

You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Most importantly, we shag at least twice a day. It's proper sex, relaxed and unhurried, no done on the sly. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

[...] 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

A surge ay euphoria comes ower me as ah clock that nippy wee cockney cunt, Nicksy; he's on the baw, giein it loads, mouthing off, so ah steam in wi a dirty two-fitted tackle on him. 'Take that, ya English bastard! ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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! ~ Irvine Welsh

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

But I really thought that me and her had something. Then I thought about how a lot of people, black and white don't like the idea of a white geezer and a black bird getting it on. One day it won't matter a fuck, we'll all be coffee-coloured with a tint of yellow. Till then we got a load of grief tae get through. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything. ~ Irvine Welsh

When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

… you were better making history than studying it. ~ Irvine Welsh

He notes the depressing haste with which the successful, in the sexual sphere as in all others, segment themselves from the failures. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

His friends will decline in their numbers as his needs increase. The inverse, or perverse, mathematics ay life. ~ Irvine Welsh

We need tits and arse because they have got to be available to us; to be pawed, fucked, wanked over. Because we're men? No. Because we're consumers. Because those are things we like, things we intrinsically feel or have been conned into believing will give us value, release satisfaction. We value them so we need to at least have the illusion of their availability. For tits and arse read coke, crisps, speedboats, cars, houses, computers, designer labels, replica shirts. That's why advertising and pornography are similar; they sell the illusion of availability and the non-consequence of consumption. ~ Irvine Welsh

It was Begbie who ensured he could never return. He had done what he wanted to do. He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He'd stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam. ~ Irvine Welsh

Well Joe, the truth is that you're not a bad guy, but you have been a bit mysogynistic and homophobic. So your punishment is to make you walk the earth as a homosexual ghost buggering your old mates and aquaitances. ~ Irvine Welsh

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. ~ Irvine Welsh

The first job of a writer is to be honest. ~ Irvine Welsh

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

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

All I can think about is that boy's skull, bashed in, the way his head was caved in and how it wasn't like a heid at all, just like a broken silly puppet face, about how when you destroy something, when you brutalise it, it always looks warped and disfigured and slightly unreal and unhuman and that's what makes it easier for you to go on brutalising it, go on fucking it and hurting it and mashing until you've destroyed it completely, proving that destruction is natural in the human spirit, that nature has devices to enable us to destroy, to make it easier for us; a way of making righteous people who want to act do things without the fear of consequence, a way of making us less than human, as we break the laws ... ~ Irvine Welsh

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