Quotes from Irvine Welsh

HOUSE! That's-you-Mark. He's-goat-hoose. OWER-HERE! Wis-nae-eve-in-gaunn-ae-shout-oot. Cu-moan-son. Git-a-fu-kin-grip-ay-yir-sel. Ah smile benignly at Jocky, all the time wishing a prompt and violent death oan the nosey cunt.

Thir no fuckin swaggerin aroond Leith, fuckin well surein thair no. A bunch ay fuckin sheepshaggers wi thair diddy European Cup Winner's Cup, comin doon here, drinkin in oor pubs, chattin up oor... Franco hesitates, looks at Tommy. Tommy can't resist it. — Sheep?

Now most people would put this doon tae experience, ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.

There's no fear or regret but no elation or sense of triumph either. It's just a job that had to be done.

Tae be touched by real love requires great fortune, it's no in your hands.

They try to con you that making that kind of choice day in, day out, makes you feel free or alive or self-actualised. But it's shite, a lifebelt to stop us all from going fuckin mad at the lunacy of this fucked-up world we've let them shape around us.

It wasn't our bad habits which really scared us; we got too used to them, they only worried others. It was the odd, unpredictable, brutal impulse you fought to restrain, the one that the rest never even saw and hopefully never would.

When the patronising cunt left, ah missed him. He nearly took us oot ay masel. It wis like auld times, but in a sense, that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed. Something hud happened. Junk hud happened. Whether ah lived wi it, died wi it, or lived withoot it, ah knew that things could never be the same again.

It felt strange telling the truth, he'd got so comfortable with deception. It made him feel real, and consequently vulnerable. tended to look at ma behaviour and ways of modifying it, rather than determining its causes.

What had come from that? All this? Surely not? Life had to be more than a series of unsolvable mysteries. Surely we were entitled to some fuckin answers.

ah've found fuck all else, ZERO, tae fill this big, BLACK HOLE like a clenched fist in the centre ay my fucking chest …

After a while, they realise they're in Gorgie. This part of the city makes them feel like intruders. They seem to smell the Hibernian off you over here, Renton reflects; not just the gadges coming out the bookies and boozers, but the young mothers in trackies wheeling the pushchairs, and strangely, worst of all, the auld wifies with gobs like feline ringpieces, who glower witchlike as they shamble by, sick and paranoid.

laughter was about more than humour. This was about reducing tension, solidarity in face of the grim reaper.

perhaps unrealistic expectations were being invested

Just lay it doon ... Renton whispers, looking at the zombie faces of his friends, trying to fight off the notion that besets him; we're not human any more. We've slipped out of our skins like lizards, shedding not just our pasts, but our futures. We're shadows.

In the gairdin ay eunuchs, even the gadgie wi the two-inch cock cannae help but swagger.) We're

Ah'd rather see ma sister in a brothel than ma brother in a Hearts scarf n that's fuckin true...

as we're enjoying the twisted but undeniable sexuality which is part and parcel of the complete dominance over another human being. This is one of the things that makes policework such a satisfying career

El paraíso huele de una forma muy concreta: a alcantarilla.

Despite the grief, there was no disguising the sense of relief in the air.

Crying with a raw power and unselfconscious abandon as the tensions ebbed from her body

the happiness and love that once lived here

1926. The General Strike in Leith. You read all that and what they said then and you pure see what the Labour Party used to believe in - freedom for the ordinary cat.

In the joy of the faces around him, Stevie gained a measurement of his own misery. The pit of melancholy was a bottomless one, and he was descending fast, falling further away from the good times. Such times often seemed tantalisingly within reach; he could see them, going on all around him. His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.