Irvine Welsh Quotes

“I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.”

Irvine Welsh book Filth

Source: Filth

“I'm not running away, I'm moving on.”

“When two people were in love you had to leave them to it. Especially when you weren't in love and wished that you were. That could embarrass. That could hurt.”

Irvine Welsh Quotes about people

Irvine Welsh book Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance

Source: Ecstasy

“Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsiously crave a wee bit ay silence.”

“The only people that ever made a difference to Billy were the Provos, and they were cunts as well. Ah've no illusions aboot them as freedom fighters. The bastards made ma brar intae a pile ay cat food. But they jist pulled the switch. His death was concieved of by these Orange cunts, comin through every July with thir sashes and flutes, fillin Billy's stupid head with nonsense aboot crown and country and aw that garbage. They'll go home chuffed fae the day. They kin tell aw thir mates aboot how one ay the family died, murdered by the IRA, while defending Ulster. It'll fuel thir pointless anger, get them bought drinks in pubs, and help establish their doss-bastard credibility wi other sectarian arseholes.”

Renton, "Kicking: The Skag Boys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior" (Chapter 1, Story 1).
Source: Trainspotting (1993)

“He had noted that with older people. They often try to control younger, more popular and vivacious people; usually due to the fact that they are jealous of the qualities the younger people have and they lack. These inadequacies are disguised with a benign, protective attitude.”

Renton, "Bang to Rites".
Trainspotting (1993)

“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”

Renton, "The First Shag in Ages".
Trainspotting (1993)

Irvine Welsh Quotes

“Love does not exist, it's like religion, the state wants you to believe in that kind of crap so they can control you, and f**k your head up.”

Source: Trainspotting

“His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.”

Source: Trainspotting

“Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”

“Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”

Source: Trainspotting

“Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough”

Source: Trainspotting

“Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe.”

Source: The Acid House

Irvine Welsh book Skagboys

Source: Skagboys

“take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace”

“It's easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt's got shite fir blood.”

Source: Trainspotting

“don't let jesus in. AA is just one obsession replaced with another”

Source: Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh book The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

Source: The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

“It's only now that I realize that behaviour always has a context and precedents, it's what you do rather than what you are, although we often never recognise that context or understand what these precedents are.”

Irvine Welsh book Marabou Stork Nightmares

Source: Marabou Stork Nightmares

“Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.”

“Funny scene, likesay, how aw the psychos seem tae ken each other, ken what ah means, likes?”

Source: Trainspotting

“How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?”

Spud, "Kicking Again: Na Na and Other Nazis" (Chapter 3, Story 2).
Trainspotting (1993)

“Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.”

Renton, Blowing It: Courting Disaster" (Chapter 4, Story 1).
Trainspotting (1993)

“There's nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved.”

The narrator talking about Ange after they are released from prison.
"Stoke Newington Blues".
The Acid House (1994)

“Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.”

A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Associates as Opiates" (Chapter 3).
The Acid House (1994)

“Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.”

Sick Boy, "Blowing It: Deid Dugs" (Chapter 4, Story 3).
Trainspotting (1993)

“"We are all acquaintances now". It goes beyond our personal junk circumstances; a brilliant metaphor for our times.”

Spud, "Kicking Again: Na Na and Other Nazis" (Chapter 3, Story 2).
Trainspotting (1993)

“Ah jist shrugged, -- Well, as one anarchist plumber sais tae the other: smash the cistern.”

ibid
Trainspotting (1993)

“Ah thought that every cunt over twenty was a toss an no worth speakin tae, until ah hit twenty. The mair ah see, the mair ah think ah wis right. After that it's aw ugly compromise, aw timid surrender, progressively until death.”

A conversation between plumbers.
"A Blockage in the System".
The Acid House (1994)

“Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.”

Renton, "Blowing It: Bang to Rites" (Chapter 4, Story 6).
Trainspotting (1993)

“Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae basebaw-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, tha's what, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.”

A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Marriage" (Chapter 13).
The Acid House (1994)

“I dinnae Tam, ah jist dinnae. Life's boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realize that we're aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill oor lives up wi shite, shite like joabs n relationships, tae delude ourselves intae thinkin that it isnae aw totally pointless. Smack's an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. It's the only really honest drug. It disnae alter yir consciousness. It jist gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. After that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anesthaetise yirsel against it.”

Renton, "Relapsing: The Glass" (Chapter 2, Story 2).
Trainspotting (1993)

“That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.”

Renton, "Relapsing: Cock Problems" (Chapter 2, Story 4).
Trainspotting (1993)

“Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know?”

A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Marriage" (Chapter 13).
Darren and Brian explaining their own notions of anarchy to Avril.
The Acid House (1994)

“Ah've never felt anything about countries, other than total disgust. They should fuckin abolish the lot of them. Kill every fuckin parasite politician that ever mouthed lies and fascist platitudes in a shell-suit and a smarmy smile.”

Spud, "Speedy Recruitment".
Trainspotting (1993)

“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.”

Renton, "London Crawling".
Trainspotting (1993)

“The duty sergeant was going through his routine of asking each brawling set of prisoners who the Billy and who the Tim was. If the handshake is right he will let the Billy go and slap the Tim around a bit. That way everybody's happy. The Billy gets to feel superior and delude himself that being a non-churchgoing 'protestant' is somehow important; the Tim gets to feel persecuted and indulge his paranoia about masonic conspiracies; the sergeant gets to slap the Tim around.”

"Alan Black Interviews Irvine Welsh for 3AM", 3:AM Magazine (2004).

“Ah cannae feel any remorse, only anger and contempt. Ah seethed when ah saw that fuckin Union Jack oan his coffin, and that smarmy, wimpy cunt ay an officer, obviously oot ay his fuckin depth here, tryin to talk tae my Ma. Worse still, these Glasgow cunts, the auld boy's side, are here through en masse. They're fill ay shite aboot how Billy died in service ay his country n all that servile Hun crap. Billy wis a daft cunt, pure and simple. No a hero, no a martyr, just a daft cunt.”

"The Two Philosophers".
The Acid House (1994)

“The rhetorical question, the stock-in-trade weapon ay burds and psychos.”

Renton, "Bang to Rites".
Trainspotting (1993)