Irvine Welsh Quotes
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Everybody in my family were great storytellers. My dad and his brothers would just go on and on; they could tell amazing stories. I think it was something to do with the Celtic, oral storytelling tradition. People very much had that propensity towards telling tales.
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I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that.
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Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown.
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Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsiously crave a wee bit ay silence.
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I left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence - laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter.
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Hugo Boss is my kind of label.
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Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places.
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The cultural war of words has actually been won by the most dispossessed people in the Western world, the urban American blacks.
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Writing is such a good thing to do because you can't really get bored with it. If you're bored with writing, you're bored with life.
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We've become used to processing images that are part of the non-linear narrative theory. I think there's a thinner line between fantasy and normality. People spend much more time in their own heads now. There's so much to conform to, so many influences coming at you.
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I would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.'
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Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.
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Before I started writing, I'd never read much fiction. I was more interested in non-fiction. I'm taking the same approach to theatre: I can operate from a position of ignorance and make up my own rules instead of being bound by customs and practice.
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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.
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I'm trying to make really flawed characters that have got redeeming features so people can say, 'I don't really like that character, but I can understand a bit where they've come from.'
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Ah jist shrugged, - Well, as one anarchist plumber sais tae the other: smash the cistern.
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It's very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own circumstances, but one thing I do know about is that I grew up surrounded by storytellers.
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I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.
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So many people have become divorced from the system, criminalised by their lifestyle.
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'Ulysses' is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new.
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Boxing gives you such a good workout, although I've stopped sparring. When your hand speed goes, you're going to get caught, and you can't afford to take cumulative smacks on the chops when you're a writer.
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Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.
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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.
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Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos.