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All Quotes by author - Irvine Welsh

" A lot of my characters are anti-heroes that became heroes. "

" A lot of people pulled me up after 'Trainspotting' for its absence of politics, but the argument I make is that the absence of politics is political as well. "

" As soon as you've written it, you're thinking about how it can move into different mediums. "

" Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books. "

" 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. "

" Boxing gives you such a good workout, although I've stopped sparring. When your hand speed goes, you're going to get caught, and you can't afford to take cumulative smacks on the chops when you're a writer. "

" Dean Owens is Scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter. "

" Everybody in my family were great storytellers. My dad and his brothers would just go on and on; they could tell amazing stories. I think it was something to do with the Celtic, oral storytelling tradition. People very much had that propensity towards telling tales. "

" Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places. "

" 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. "

" Everyone needs some kind of compelling drama in their life, basically. "

" Filmmaking is a much more collaborative thing than literature, so you know you're going to be working with a group of people at the start. You know it's going to be a compromise. "

" For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board. "

" From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy. "

" Historically, men have a hard time getting onboard with feminism, but I think that's changing. "

" Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown. "

" How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified. "

" Hugo Boss is my kind of label. "

" I come up with a blurb at the beginning, but the book will always be completely different by the time it's finished. They say, 'Where's the book you were going to write?' And I say, 'Forget about it. It doesn't exist.' "

" I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it. "

" 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. "

" I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself. "

" I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence. "

" I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know? "

" I enjoy the freedom of the blank page. "

" I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships. "

" If you're going to do something that's going to cause offence to people, you're always going to get a reaction. "

" I go to the gym and work through a routine. But if you see someone with a personal trainer, you know they do 10 times more than you do. You give up your sense of identity. If you watch 'The Biggest Loser,' you see people give up their identity to become something else. "

" 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. "

" I have a lot of successful musician pals, and as I get older, I find that I'm lucky to be a writer. I have great anonymity compared to musicians who sell the same number of records as I do books. "

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