Quotes from Irvine Welsh

There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.

Mates are a waste of fucking time. They are always ready to drag you down tae their level of social, sexual and intellectual mediocrity.

This is what being alive's all about, all those fucked up feelings. You've got to have them; when you stop, watch out.

People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.

You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt.

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

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

I'm more of a warrior than you'll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie.

Everything in the street today seems soft focus.

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.

Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough

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

He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. I didn't believe that at the time, but now I do. 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.

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

You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness.