Irvine Welsh Quotes
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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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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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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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I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships.
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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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Words should have the power to inform and to move, not the power to send people scurrying away. But if you attach that much emotional energy to a word, it gives people the power to hurt each other.
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People should be able to express their culture without getting into all that chauvinistic thing.
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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 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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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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Hugo Boss is my kind of label.
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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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The older you get, the less physically and mentally robust you become.
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It's where you come from that's the strange, exotic, quirky, mad place.
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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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I'm not really a mainstream novelist!
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From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy.
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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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People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.
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What worries me is the professionalism of everything.
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If you're going to do something that's going to cause offence to people, you're always going to get a reaction.
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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.
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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.