How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified. – Irvine Welsh
I’d always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn’t getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel. – Irvine Welsh
Before I started writing, I’d never read much fiction. I was more interested in non-fiction. I’m taking the same approach to theatre: I can operate from a position of ignorance and make up my own rules instead of being bound by customs and practice. – Irvine Welsh
The idea is not enough. And the most annoying thing for me as a writer is that people will come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a book. I’m not a writer, but I’ve got a great story.’ – Irvine Welsh
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. – Irvine Welsh
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. – Irvine Welsh
I left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence – laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter. – Irvine Welsh
Words should have the power to inform and to move, not the power to send people scurrying away. But if you attach that much emotional energy to a word, it gives people the power to hurt each other. – Irvine Welsh
There’s all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it’s a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society. – Irvine Welsh
There’s something about the modern era where it’s very hard to transgress – we’re all so online, easier to track by mobile phone – so you have people who do it on your behalf. – Irvine Welsh
I wanted to capture the excitement of house music, almost like a four-four beat, and the best way to do that was to use a language that was rhythmic and performative. – Irvine Welsh
I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves. – Irvine Welsh
Every kind of book I’ve written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven’t re-invented the process every time but I almost have. – Irvine Welsh
I’m trying to make really flawed characters that have got redeeming features so people can say, ‘I don’t really like that character, but I can understand a bit where they’ve come from.’ – Irvine Welsh
You can’t satirise darts, because it’s hyper-real as it is; there’s already enough over-the-top madness to it. – Irvine Welsh
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. – Irvine Welsh
When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I’d generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they’d turn into novels. I was biased toward music. – Irvine Welsh
Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That’s what makes it what it is. – Irvine Welsh
It’s very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own circumstances, but one thing I do know about is that I grew up surrounded by storytellers. – Irvine Welsh
‘Ulysses’ is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new. – Irvine Welsh
I think the silences we have on some issues are inductive of the fact that we need to write about them more, but I think there are some issues you have to write in a sensitive way and in a way that respects the reality of the situation. If you can’t do that, you should leave them alone. – Irvine Welsh
What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving. – Irvine Welsh
Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist – the legitimiser of our egos. – Irvine Welsh
