Welsh Irvine Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Begbie doesnae even notice; he's in his element, particularly good at funerals in the way a lot ay psychopaths tend tae be. Ah suppose if bringing death and despair is yir life's work, then being somewhere like this must feel like a result; the job's already done and you can just kick back and relax. — 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

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

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

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

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

Fuck that: take shagging n peeve oot ay the equation n yir left wi the sqare root ay swee fuck all! — 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

adjourn for another beer. We — Irvine Welsh

Bruce, you're an ugly and silly old man. You're very possibly an alcoholic and God knows what else. You're the type of sad case who preys on vulnerable, weak and stupid women in order to boost his own shattered ego. You're a mess. You've gone wrong somewhere pal. — 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

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

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

Schopenhauer was right: Life has to be about disillusionment stumbling inexorably towards the totally fucked. — 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

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

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

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

Don't let jesus in. AA is just one obsession replaced with another — Irvine Welsh

As if the physical proximity can make up for the emotional distance. — Irvine Welsh

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

Jim has a nice life, he considers, but sometimes Frank has a hell of a lot more fun. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism. — Irvine Welsh

We kissed for a bit and I stopped shaking. We played with each other for a long time, and after we had joined, my cock and her fanny became one thing, then it seemed to vanish as we took off on a big psychic trip together. It was our souls and our minds that were doing it all; our genitals, our bodies, they were just launch pads and were soon superfluous as we went around the universe together on our shared trip, moving in and out of each other's heads and finding nothing in them but good things, nothing in them but love. The intensity increased until it became almost unbearable and we exploded together in an orgasmic crash-landing onto the shipwreck of a bed, from a long way out in some form of space. We held each other tightly, drenched in sweat and shaking with emotion — Irvine Welsh

Clell, Gillman and I are joined by the wee chinky bird with the toff's English-Yank accent. It keeps fuckin well changing. Probably been tae posh schools all over the world. I hate those privileged cunts. They think that you're fuck all, that they can use you tae clean up their shite, and in fact, most of the time they are spot-on. What they don't know though, is that you're always lurking in the shadows. The opportunity to pounce usually never comes along but you're always lurking, always ready. Just in case. — 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

Are you asking me or telling me? — Irvine Welsh

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power ... I don't think we speak the truth to power for power's ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

The black insect-dead eyes in her suety, pockmarked face gaze at him — 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

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

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

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

Everything is muffled and car-crash-like and I want to speak but she's looking through me and I'm looking through alcohol. We're nowhere near each other even as we stumble in tandem through our disintegrating lives. — Irvine Welsh

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. — Irvine Welsh

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

What worries me is the professionalism of everything. — 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

Square go then smart cunt! — Irvine Welsh

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

I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships. — Irvine Welsh

No tears come, and it would be pointless, like trying to empty a reservoir of grief by drip feed. I'm being daft. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

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. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

-The renegade robots are now long dead, the metal ones rusted, the human ones bled. — Irvine Welsh

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? — Irvine Welsh

Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level. — Irvine Welsh

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

[...] 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

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

Living like this is a full-time business. — Irvine Welsh

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

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'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

I've read a lot of Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting, Glue - he's written some beauties. — Andrew Flintoff

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

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

This is what being alive's all about, all those fucked up feelings. You've got to have them; when you stop, watch out. — Irvine Welsh

USA. The land of the free; where you accent didn't matter. But he supposed everybody related to it; movies, TV, fat-food, outlets, you grew up with it. Cultural imperialism. Yet no wonder everybody increasingly hated it: it was stupid, self-serving and so in-your-face that it was setting itself up to be despised — 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

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

Mates are a waste of fucking time. They are always ready to drag you down tae their level of social, sexual and intellectual mediocrity. — Irvine Welsh

I reach into my bag and I pull out my claw hammer. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

Ah realise now thit death is usually a process, rather than an
event. People generally die by degrees, incrementally. They rot away slowly in homes and hoespitals,
or places like this. — Irvine Welsh

I enjoy the freedom of the blank page. — Irvine Welsh

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 — Irvine Welsh

It should be the likes ay us that agitate for change, but aw we dae is drugs. — Irvine Welsh

No fuckin way: cunt dies when ah fuckin well say eh dies.
(Jim Frances Begbie as he is trying to resuscitate a friend who's having a stroke.) — Irvine Welsh

Thir must be less tae life than this. — Irvine Welsh

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. — Irvine Welsh

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

Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe. — Irvine Welsh

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

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

- Ah nivir bother asking ma father who ah kin shag, ah idly observe.
- Glad tae hear it, Sylvia says in clipped tones as Ali stifles a giggle.
- Me neither ... groans Matty, - ... unless it's muh ma.
- That's only good manners, ah shrugs. — Irvine Welsh

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

Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there wood not be one tree left standing on God's green Earth. — Irvine Welsh

You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. — 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

By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. — Irvine Welsh