Irvine Welsh Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
I'm the worst employee in the world. I'll cheat and steal time and resources from my employer, although I'll con everybody into believing I'm essential to the operation.
-
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.
-
Dean Owens is Scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter.
-
I'm the worst employer I could wish for because I push myself hard.
-
People in Scotland want the parliament but don't give a toss about the elections.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I make out a play list for every character and buy the records they would listen to; it helps me find their personas. What they play, where they stay, who they lay, is my matrix for character development.
-
If you're going to do something that's going to cause offence to people, you're always going to get a reaction.
-
You know what it's like: you don't want to read your old books again. All you can see are the flaws, what you would do differently.
-
When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them.
-
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
-
Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n aw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.
-
I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
What worries me is the professionalism of everything.
-
I come up with a blurb at the beginning, but the book will always be completely different by the time it's finished. They say, 'Where's the book you were going to write?' And I say, 'Forget about it. It doesn't exist.'