Top 160 Irvine Welsh Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “No tears come, and it would be pointless, like trying to empty a reservoir of grief by drip feed. I’m being daft.”

— Irvine Welsh

102. “I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.”

— Irvine Welsh

103. “His mind raced through past horrors experienced first hand and from the accounts of others. He mentally flipped through a grim database which contained everything from vegan flatmates to psychotic pimps.”

— Irvine Welsh

104. “It’s easy to love, or for that matter hate, somebody in their absence, somebody we don’t really know...”

— Irvine Welsh

105. “The first job of a writer is to be honest.”

— Irvine Welsh

106. “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

107. “They don’t understand the type of world we’re living in now, all those menaced souls clamouring for attention and recognition.”

— Irvine Welsh

108. “The pit of melancholy was a bottomless one, and he was descending fast, falling further away from the good times. Such times often seemed tantalisingly within reach; he could see them, going on all around him. His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.”

— Irvine Welsh

109. “Awright Al? I asked him. A silly question really. Convention always imposes its lunacy on us at such inappropriate times.”

— Irvine Welsh

110. “We are all acquaintances now.”

— Irvine Welsh

111. “Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there wood not be one tree left standing on God’s green Earth.”

— Irvine Welsh

112. “I grew up in what was not so much a familyas a genetic disaster.”

— Irvine Welsh

113. “His friends will decline in their numbers as his needs increase. The inverse, or perverse, mathematics ay life.”

— Irvine Welsh

114. “Perversity and obstinacy are integral tae the Scottish character.”

— Irvine Welsh

115. “The black insect-dead eyes in her suety, pockmarked face gaze at him.”

— Irvine Welsh

116. “I’m glad our slivers of existence intersected in a Venn diagram between the crushing slabs of oblivion on either side of them.”

— Irvine Welsh

117. “I feel like I’ve exhausted guys and male friendships.”

— Irvine Welsh

118. “The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they’ll write what they feel.”

— Irvine Welsh

119. “This thought though, is nowhere near sufficient tae stop us fae daein what ah huv tae dae.”

— Irvine Welsh

120. “Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won’t hear that noise.”

— Irvine Welsh

121. “She’s quite a nice looking lassie or she wid be if she didnae look shite.”

— Irvine Welsh

122. “I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I’m writing I don’t like to read other fiction.”

— Irvine Welsh

123. “Might huv ehs ma’s brains, cause ay his heid taperin backwards intae a point like a fuckin alien.”

— Irvine Welsh

124. “It was cauld. For about a minute the grey sky ferociously split and sunlight burst through, pouring ower the city, reflectin off the glitterin granite. The blood pounded in ma heid, makin me want tae be somewhere else. Then it was away and that heavy cloak ay grey was back oan us.”

— Irvine Welsh

125. “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

126. “As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.”

— Irvine Welsh

127. “It unsettles the women as they have dropped their disguise and are now giant praying mantis with blonde and auburn wigs, lipstick smeared on those deadly pincher-like insect jaws.”

— Irvine Welsh

128. “Franco’s voice is something tae hear, it’s like wi it bein Hogmanay, he’s absorbed just the right amount ay alcohol n good vibes and they intersect at this wonderous vector as he briefly becomes something else, this force ay grace and soul.”

— Irvine Welsh

129. “He notes the depressing haste with which the successful, in the sexual sphere as in all others, segment themselves from the failures.”

— Irvine Welsh

130. “There’s some kids playing out in the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m going to have a long life.”

— Irvine Welsh

131. “The disease which racked his body was a sweetheart compared to the more obscure one that possessed his sick mind.”

— Irvine Welsh

132. “When I’m not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I’ve been writing quite constantly lately so I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction – philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies.”

— Irvine Welsh

133. “There’s no fear or regret but no elation or sense of triumph either. It’s just a job that had to be done.”

— Irvine Welsh

134. “It could have been suicide or an accident, or perhaps that grey area in between.”

— Irvine Welsh

135. “She’s lovely and she’s with Skinner, and they’re probably in love and there’s no justice in this world.”

— Irvine Welsh

136. “He feels the bleakness crawling into his skull; Franco breaths in steadily, trying to tune in all out, that pressure on your brain, eroding focus, diverting the flow of thought down old ruinous canals...”

— Irvine Welsh

137. “The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That’s what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana’s funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.”

— Irvine Welsh

138. “Ah felt a paralysis ay emotion as time stretched out. A pervading numbness was setting in, like a dentist’s anaesthetic, spreading through ma body.”

— Irvine Welsh

139. “But you were brave, eh, Granda, charging up that beach, ye must have been brave.’ ‘I was scared, son,’ he’d telt me, his face sombre. ‘But most of all ah wis angry; angry at being there. Really angry. I wanted tae take it out on somebody, then go hame.’ ‘But that man hud tae be stoaped though, Faither,’ my dad had implored, ‘ye said so yirsel!’ ‘Ah know that. Ah wis angry that he wis allowed tae git started in the first place.”

— Irvine Welsh

140. “Ah remember walkin along Princes Street wi Spud, we both hate walkin along that hideous street, deadened by tourists and shoppers, the twin curse ay modern capitalism.”

— Irvine Welsh

141. “Ah’m sittin in the hotel bar waitin oan Fiona. Thinkin aboot her heart-melting smile and that sexy, concentrated frown when she evaluates books and the comments made by lecturers. Whenever she comes into a room, ma spirits soar. What ah feel is delight, pure and simple. Our life is all passionate kisses and soft wells of laughter. Ah love watchin her in class; even though we’re shaggin, it’s still great tae just look at her.”

— Irvine Welsh

142. “Even evil bastards like Frank Begbie probabably attained an angelic innocence when they were out for the count.”

— Irvine Welsh

143. “It was all that vain, egotistical insincerity of self-reproach. By blaming ourselves we take away the right of others to do the same.”

— Irvine Welsh

144. “Now I’ll be left alone, and that’s all you want, all you crave out of life: to be left alone while you get on with the business of interfering with others. In.”

— Irvine Welsh

145. “Las convenciones siempre nos imponen su locura en los momentos menos apropiados.”

— Irvine Welsh

146. “I pay more tax registered in Holland than I would in the USA, but better gieing to the Dutch to build dams than the Yanks to build bombs.”

— Irvine Welsh

147. “I wouldn’t care about hurting myself or anybody else. Because I know now that doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them.”

— Irvine Welsh

148. “Without this kickstart to my day, I’d be lost. A day without a morning run is a day you fumble through, rather than one you attack.”

— Irvine Welsh

149. “If only he loved himself as much as he loved the rest of the world.”

— Irvine Welsh

150. “We were slowly, but irrevocably, coming apart.”

— Irvine Welsh