Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" The idea of just sitting at home on Facebook worries me. I think we should all get out more. "
Irvine Welsh
More
Home
Sitting
Related Quotes:
" 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
Hard
Modern
Track
" Sometimes a book influences me because it winds me up. There'll be something that gets under my skin and makes me think that I can do better. "
Irvine Welsh
Skin
Think
Sometimes
" 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
" I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me. "
Irvine Welsh
Me
Time
Want
" Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff. "
Irvine Welsh
Worry
People
Money
" It was around the summer of 1982 when the drug problem really impacted. It became a lifestyle rather than a recreation. When you start lying and stealing, you cannot con yourself you're in control any more. "
Irvine Welsh
You
Yourself
Control
" 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 people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it. "
Irvine Welsh
Perfect
Writing
Start
" I think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence. "
Irvine Welsh
People
Me
Like
" I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are. "
Irvine Welsh
Book
Think
People
" You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness. "
Irvine Welsh
Time
People
Writing
" 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
" I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence. "
Irvine Welsh
Audience
Perceive
Pure
" 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
Tradition
Kind
Nobody
" 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
Kind
Way
Started
" 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. "
Irvine Welsh
People
Who
Leisure
" I think what you call 'metropolitan America' - as in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles - I think there's more awareness of the atypical, while in more traditional Britain, there's the kitchen-sink dramas and thrillers. It's more formulaic. "
Irvine Welsh
Think
America
Awareness
" 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
" The first job of a writer is to be honest. "
Irvine Welsh
First
Writer
First Job
" 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
Create
Literature
Now
" You know what it's like: you don't want to read your old books again. All you can see are the flaws, what you would do differently. "
Irvine Welsh
Old
You
Want
" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "
Irvine Welsh
Novelist
Mainstream
Really
" People should be able to express their culture without getting into all that chauvinistic thing. "
Irvine Welsh
Getting
Without
People
" I'm a failed musician rather than a successful writer. "
Irvine Welsh
Writer
Failed
Rather
" 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
" Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos. "
Irvine Welsh
Television
Government
Become
" Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process. "
Irvine Welsh
Music
Helps
Me
" I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships. "
Irvine Welsh
Exhausted
Guys
I Feel Like
" I used to sit on the Circle Line and go 'round and 'round and write. "
Irvine Welsh
Sit
Circle
Used
" 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.' "
Irvine Welsh
Book
You
Say