Quotes from Irvine Welsh

There's a set of VPLs (visible panty lines) on the chicky in front ay us, and all my concentration is required to ensure a thorough examination can be undertaken.

When you hurt some cunt […] it's you duty to enjoy it, otherwise you've done it for fuck all, it means nothing

He had recently graduated with a degree in English Literature and was on the dole. So were most of his fellow graduates.

If we jist be oorselves, n be honest, thill nivir gie either ay us the fuckin joab.

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? Ah git good vibes aboot this interview the day though man, ken?

I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.

Conservatives are giving up on democracy because it's not efficient. They want an autocratic regime.

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.

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level.

I'm a failed musician rather than a successful writer.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

It's ironic that the growth of Scottish nationalism has precipitated in the English the sort of hand-wringing the Scots have always done over who they are.

I'm probably a natural uncle. I can take the kids out and have fun with them and look after them, and I can be Mr. Popular. But actually having to do the grind? That stuff just doesn't appeal at all.

Underground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground.

People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.

I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that.

Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it.

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.

The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel.

When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them.

I think of the women I know, and very few of them are obsessed with shopping, or with getting a guy - they want their own thing, they have their own network going on.

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.

I'm the worst employee in the world. I'll cheat and steal time and resources from my employer, although I'll con everybody into believing I'm essential to the operation.