Irvine Welsh citations

“Le regole son quelle.”

“Same rules apply.”

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

“Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them.”

“You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”

“Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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