Irvine Welsh > Quotes

“You can't lie to your soul.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“I'm not running away, I'm moving on.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them.”
― Irvine Welsh

“I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.”
― Irvine Welsh, The Acid House

“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. ”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“You were what you were and you are what you are. Fuck that regrets bullshit.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

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

“We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone.”
― Irvine Welsh, Filth

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“This is what being alive's all about, all those fucked up feelings. You've got to have them; when you stop, watch out.”
― Irvine Welsh, The Acid House

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ah sound mind, ectetera, ectetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, because it's seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it's thair fuckin problem. As Harry Launder sais, ah jist intend tae keep right on to the end of the road...”
― Irvine Welsh

“You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Fuckin failures in a country of failures. Its nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant healthy society to be colonised by. No..we are ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wis the shite thev got. Ah hate the Scots.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

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

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Thir must be less tae life than this”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Ecstasy

“The train was nearly twenty minutes late, an excellent performance by British Rail standards.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough”
― Irvine Welsh, The Acid House

“Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“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.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting