Irvine Welsh Quotes
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I go to the gym and work through a routine. But if you see someone with a personal trainer, you know they do 10 times more than you do. You give up your sense of identity. If you watch 'The Biggest Loser,' you see people give up their identity to become something else.
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I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships.
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It's ironic that the growth of Scottish nationalism has precipitated in the English the sort of hand-wringing the Scots have always done over who they are.
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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.
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People should be able to express their culture without getting into all that chauvinistic thing.
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In my flat in Chicago, I've got this big room with an office in the corner and a balcony so I can watch people go by.
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The older you get, the less physically and mentally robust you become.
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I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know?
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It's where you come from that's the strange, exotic, quirky, mad place.
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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.
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I'm not really a mainstream novelist!
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When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them.
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I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence.
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From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy.
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I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.
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You can't satirise darts, because it's hyper-real as it is; there's already enough over-the-top madness to it.
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When people write a novel, they want to have that reach and that impact. To get it with a first novel, you can either see it as an albatross or a calling card.
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I just want to get on and tell stories.
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You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness.
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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.
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People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.
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Dean Owens is Scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter.
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When I left school at 16, I became an apprentice television and radio technician, and was paid £17 a week, which was decent money in 1976. But the job turned sour when I gave myself an electric shock while repairing a television set.
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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.