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" I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence. "
Irvine Welsh
Audience
Perceive
Pure
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" Underground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground. "
Irvine Welsh
People
Looking
Finding
" 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
Think
You
Alone
" 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
Same
Up
Always
" Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level. "
Irvine Welsh
People
Sometimes
Culture
" I've been doing a bit of screenwriting and producing, and even a bit of directing. "
Irvine Welsh
Producing
Doing
Directing
" So many people have become divorced from the system, criminalised by their lifestyle. "
Irvine Welsh
System
People
Become
" 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. "
Irvine Welsh
Amazing
Think
People
" I would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.' "
Irvine Welsh
Never
Raw
Been
" I think that every project offers an opportunity to reinvent process as well as content. "
Irvine Welsh
Think
Opportunity
Content
" From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy. "
Irvine Welsh
Realism
Acid
House
" 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
Turn
Ideas
Music
" People should be able to express their culture without getting into all that chauvinistic thing. "
Irvine Welsh
Getting
Without
People
" I'm probably a natural uncle. I can take the kids out and have fun with them and look after them, and I can be Mr. Popular. But actually having to do the grind? That stuff just doesn't appeal at all. "
Irvine Welsh
I Can
Uncle
Have Fun
" I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction. "
Irvine Welsh
More
Nonfiction
Writing
" As soon as you've written it, you're thinking about how it can move into different mediums. "
Irvine Welsh
Move
Soon
You
" 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. "
Irvine Welsh
Dark
Kind
Life
" 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
I Can
Character
Trying
" 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. "
Irvine Welsh
Me
Political
People
" It's been a good thing for me to try and understand America. "
Irvine Welsh
Me
Understand
Try
" I just want to get on and tell stories. "
Irvine Welsh
Stories
Want
Tell
" A lot of my characters are anti-heroes that became heroes. "
Irvine Welsh
Became
Lot
Heroes
" 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
Book
Writing
Way
" When you grow up in a place, you always think it's mundane. Then you travel around and live in different places, and you realise that you've got it the wrong way 'round. "
Irvine Welsh
Travel
You
Grow
" When you go away, you see where you come from in a different light. I see Scotland, and the rest of Britain, as much more exotic than I used to. "
Irvine Welsh
See
Rest
More
" 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
Power
People
Hurt
" Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos. "
Irvine Welsh
Television
Government
Become
" 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
You
Darts
Enough
" The first job of a writer is to be honest. "
Irvine Welsh
First
Writer
First Job
" We have to give feminism a shot. Out of sheer self preservation, we have to stand aside and let women run the show. "
Irvine Welsh
Self
Stand
Women
" People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath. "
Irvine Welsh
Some
Think
You