Irvine Welsh Quotes
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Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.
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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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There's something about the modern era where it's very hard to transgress - we're all so online, easier to track by mobile phone - so you have people who do it on your behalf.
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Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos.
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As soon as you've written it, you're thinking about how it can move into different mediums.
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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 are all acquaintances now'. It goes beyond our personal junk circumstances; a brilliant metaphor for our times.
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It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element.
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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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It's been a good thing for me to try and understand America.
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People either think I'm this totally savage, idiot-savant genius guy who's lucked out or they think I'm a super-manipulative crafty businessman, this kind of MBA guy who's spotted a gap in the market and knows how to create a product for it. It's flattering, but I've not got that much of a gameplan.
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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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I have a lot of successful musician pals, and as I get older, I find that I'm lucky to be a writer. I have great anonymity compared to musicians who sell the same number of records as I do books.
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There is a kind of mysticism to writing.
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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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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 idea is not enough. And the most annoying thing for me as a writer is that people will come up to me and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea for a book. I'm not a writer, but I've got a great story.'
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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.
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Writers in Britain aren't really celebrities. You become kind of a darling of a small set.
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Sometimes a book influences me because it winds me up. There'll be something that gets under my skin and makes me think that I can do better.
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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'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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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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Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.