Quotes from Irvine Welsh

The Victim was a chronic fuck-up. People Like her always seemed to hang out with The Poisonous Cunt. In turn, she kept their self-esteem low and made sure that they stayed in psychic immiseration. She was a curator of dead souls.

Bruce, you're an ugly and silly old man. You're very possibly an alcoholic and God knows what else. You're the type of sad case who preys on vulnerable, weak and stupid women in order to boost his own shattered ego. You're a mess. You've gone wrong somewhere pal.

With the gift of faith, we move on.

It wis like auld times, but in a sense that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed.

How did it make you feel?

It was Begbie who ensured he could never return. He had done what he wanted to do. He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He'd stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam.

Are you asking me or telling me?

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. I believe in punk rock. In northern soul. In acid house. In mod. In rock and roll. I also believe in pre commercial righteous, rap and hip hop. That's my manifesto.

Ah fuckin hate the way some American cunts call lassies cunts. Fuckin offensive, that shite.

When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again.

Living like this is a full-time business.

They mean well, and they mean well tae me, but there's nae way under the sun that they can appreciate what ah feel, what ah need. Protect me from those who wish tae help us.

Life is a dynamic rather than a static process, and when we don't change it kills us. It's not running away, it's moving on.

Renton looks at her and sees her pain and anger. It cuts him up. It confuses him. Kelly has a great sense of humour. What's wrong with her? The knee–jerk thought: Wrong time of the' month is forming in his head when he looks about and picks up the intonations of the laughter around the bar. It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. How was ah tae know, he thinks. How the fuck was ah tae know?

This internal sea. The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads ay poisonous flotsam and jetsam … that poison is diluted by the sea, but once the ocean rolls out, it leaves the shite behind, inside ma body. It takes as well as gives, it washes away ma endorphins, ma pain resistance centres; they take a long time tae come back.

But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist. And we cannot move.

But ah cannae even endorse these sentiments as they are at best peripheral tae the moment.

On the issue of drugs, we wir classical liberals, vehemently opposed tae state intervention in any form.

A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one.

Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror.

I pay more tax registered in Holland than I would in the USA, but better gieing to the Dutch to build dams than the Yanks to build bombs.

Ah realise now thit death is usually a process, rather than an event. People generally die by degrees, incrementally. They rot away slowly in homes and hoespitals, or places like this.

He notes the depressing haste with which the successful, in the sexual sphere as in all others, segment themselves from the failures.

Analysing novels meant ripping oot their soul and it destroyed my enjoyment of them. Ah couldnae allow masel tae be trained tae thing that way. Only by refusing tae study literature was ah able tae maintain ma passion for it.