Irvine Welsh Quotes

Most people in the West are not politicized. They're the most simplistic consumers - they're animals, basically.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.

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.

I can see why the Russians love Robert Burns, I think that Russians and Koreans have a very similar outlook to Scots.

If I don't have something to do, I'm not the kind of person who can sit on a beach on holiday. I've got to go and check things out and see things and look at things, and have some kind of itinerary in my mind. I think that a lot of people who are, in some ways, successful are kind of like that.

I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

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.

The readers get younger all the time, and we're getting older.

Everything in the street today seems soft focus.

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.

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'.