Top 160 Irvine Welsh Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “You can’t lie to your soul.”

— Irvine Welsh

2. “I’m not running away, I’m moving on.”

— Irvine Welsh

3. “How did it make you feel?”

— Irvine Welsh

4. “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

5. “What worries me is the professionalism of everything.”

— Irvine Welsh

6. “Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That’s what makes it what it is.”

— Irvine Welsh

7. “Life is a dynamic rather than a static process, and when we don’t change it kills us. It’s not running away, it’s moving on.”

— Irvine Welsh

8. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

— Irvine Welsh

9. “Thir must be less tae life than this.”

— Irvine Welsh

10. “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

11. “Ah suppose man, ah’m too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It’s likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y’know.”

— Irvine Welsh

12. “I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That’s what I hate about all this technology.”

— Irvine Welsh

13. “I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.”

— Irvine Welsh

14. “We all see what we want to see.”

— Irvine Welsh

15. “Jim has a nice life, he considers, but sometimes Frank has a hell of a lot more fun.”

— Irvine Welsh

16. “Here ah am in the junky’s limbo; too sick tae sleep, too tired tae stay awake. A twilight zone ay the senses where nothing’s real except the crushing, omnipresent misery n pain in your mind n body.”

— Irvine Welsh

17. “Ah don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?”

— Irvine Welsh

18. “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

19. “Now, for the first time, he’s seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it’s all so simple. You don’t have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe.”

— Irvine Welsh

20. “There is a kind of mysticism to writing.”

— Irvine Welsh

21. “Drugs are always fun.”

— Irvine Welsh

22. “I’m working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together.”

— Irvine Welsh

23. “I like the idea of a black sun; like a black hole in space, sucking everything into darkness, where we came from and where we’re heading.”

— Irvine Welsh

24. “I’m always watching people over a short time frame, putting them in an extreme position. Sometimes you don’t see the humanity in a person because the time frame is so short and the circumstance so extreme.”

— Irvine Welsh

25. “Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”

— Irvine Welsh

26. “How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?”

— Irvine Welsh

27. “Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”

— Irvine Welsh

28. “This internal sea. The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads ay poisonous flotsam and jetsam... that poison is diluted by the sea, but once the ocean rolls out, it leaves the shite behind, inside ma body.”

— Irvine Welsh

29. “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

30. “Awareness is seventy percent of the solution.”

— Irvine Welsh

31. “You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.”

— Irvine Welsh

32. “You pushed me away mister. You rejected me. You tricked me and spoiled things between me and my true love. I’ve seen you before. Long ago, just lying there as you are now. Black, broken, dying, I was glad then and I’m glad now.”

— Irvine Welsh

33. “It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but ah fear that this internal sea is gaunnae subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in ma body.”

— Irvine Welsh

34. “There’s nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved.”

— Irvine Welsh

35. “Bruce, you’re an ugly and silly old man. You’re very possibly an alcoholic and God knows what else. You’re the type of sad case who preys on vulnerable, weak and stupid women in order to boost his own shattered ego. You’re a mess. You’ve gone wrong somewhere pal.”

— Irvine Welsh

36. “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

37. “He was a very arrogant young man, so full of himself.”

— Irvine Welsh

38. “I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination.”

— Irvine Welsh

39. “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

40. “Most middle-class people I know don’t really live like me. 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

41. “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

42. “Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.”

— Irvine Welsh

43. “Disnae matter if it’s Mickey Platini or Franco Begbie, they will aw just have tae wait.”

— Irvine Welsh

44. “Le regole son quelle.”

— Irvine Welsh

45. “Living like this is a full-time business.”

— Irvine Welsh

46. “Johnny wis a junky as well as a dealer. Ye hud tae go a wee bit further up the ladder before ye found a dealer whae didnae use. We called Johnny ‘Mother Superior’ because ay the length ay time he’d hud his habit.”

— Irvine Welsh

47. “Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them.”

— Irvine Welsh

48. “His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.”

— Irvine Welsh

49. “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

50. “They disembark like pieces of broken crockery being poured out of a packing case.”

— Irvine Welsh