Quotes from Irvine Welsh

I reach into my bag and I pull out my claw hammer.

It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments.

Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there would not be one tree left standing on God's green Earth.

no matter how early you rise or how late you turn in, you never see that point where light begins or the first bruise of darkness bleeds in under its fragile skin; the beauty, and the scary, unfathomable wisdom of transition.

The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.

Fiona, this is my mate, Frank Begbie. Or Franco. Or Beggars. Or the Beggar Boy. Or the Generalissmo. Or Psychotic Bullying Prick.

Since he was sixteen, he had been continuously sexually active, either with a girlfriend or through a series of casual flings. From the point of someone like Kibby, he considered, he would be regarded as highly succesful with women. But the real problem is relationships, which fucking social retards like Kibby can't grasp, because they're just so obsessed with getting their hole.

Ye see, Rab, it's due to the way we feel about our arseholes. We now believe, as a species, if our soul is located anywhere in our bodies, it's up our arses. That's where it all goes. It makes sense. That's why we're obsessed with anal jokes, anal sex, anal hobbies...the arsehole - not the brain, not space - is the last frontier. That's what makes us revolutionaries.

The trick was to consume as quickly as possible; in doing it this way there was a sense that the body could be cheated.

Ah'm thinking about shoutin 'stop' but ah could never turn away at this point. If smack is as addictive as they say, then ah'm already aw the junky ah'm ever gaunny be.

Schopenhauer was right: Life has to be about disillusionment stumbling inexorably towards the totally fucked.

Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything.

The best way ah knew tae strike a chord without compromising too much tae the sickening hypocrisy, perversely peddled as decency, which fills the room, is tae stick tae the clichés.

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 town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.

Begbie doesnae even notice; he's in his element, particularly good at funerals in the way a lot ay psychopaths tend tae be. Ah suppose if bringing death and despair is yir life's work, then being somewhere like this must feel like a result; the job's already done and you can just kick back and relax.

So she's wipin spunk offay her face, gaun aw fuckin panicky, `Whae wis that, wis that ma dad?` `Fuckin durty pervert sneakin up oan cunts like that,` ah goes. So she goes aw that fuckin ice-cauld, frigid, huffey wey, but fuck her, ye need a wee bit ay fuckin romance at Christmas.

me doy cuenta de que por lo general la muerte es un proceso, más que un suceso. Generalmente la gente se muere poco a poco, acumulativamente. Se pudren lentamente en residencias u hospitales, o sitios como éste

It's easy to love, or for that matter hate, somebody in their absence, somebody we don't really know...

Drugs are always fun.

It was cauld. For about a minute the grey sky ferociously split and sunlight burst through, pouring ower the city, reflectin off the glitterin granite. The blood pounded in ma heid, makin me want tae be somewhere else. Then it was away and that heavy cloak ay grey was back oan us.

Depois de sumir, o melhor é continuar assim; voltar é se rematerializar na loucura alheia.

She's nothing to do with my shit, but fuck it, none of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy.

writing about drugs is like that though, isn't it? You can just tell when someone is writing about drugs and they've never really done them. It screams out at you. That's something where I believe you have to have been there to really get it, y'know?