Irvine Welsh

Trainspotting (1993)

• Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsiously crave a wee bit ay silence.
  • "Kicking: The Skag Boys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior" (Chapter 1, Story 1)

• That beats any meat injection ... that beats any fuckin cock in the world ... Ali gasps, completely serious. It unnerves us tae the extent that ah feel ma ain genitals through ma troosers tae see if they're still thair.
  • Alison, after receiving a shot of heroin from Sick Boy, narrated by Renton.
  • "Kicking: The Skag Boys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior" (Chapter 1, Story 1) (ellipses in the original)

• The rhetorical question, the stock-in-trade weapon ay burds and psychos.
  • "Relapsing: Scotland Takes Drugs in Psychic Defense" (Chapter 2, Story 1)

• Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Bebgie. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. 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? The lowest of the fuckin low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.
  • "Relapsing: The Glass" (Chapter 2, Story 2)

• Life's boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realize that we're aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die.
  • "Relapsing: Cock Problems" (Chapter 2, Story 4)

• Funny scene, likesay, how aw the psychos seem tae ken each other, ken what ah means, likes?
  • "Kicking Again: Na Na and Other Nazis" (Chapter 3, Story 2)

• Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.
  • Spud narrating a past conversation with Renton immediately before a race-ignited brawl in a pub.
  • "Kicking Again: Na Na and Other Nazis" (Chapter 3, Story 2)

• How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?
  • Blowing It: Courting Disaster" (Chapter 4, Story 1)

• Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.
  • "Blowing It: Deid Dugs" (Chapter 4, Story 3)
  • Sick Boy, after using a baseball bat to kill a pitbull.

• Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ay sound mind etcetera, etcetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, beacuse its seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv to offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mouth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've spawned to replace yourself. Choose life.
  Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it's thair fuckin problem. As Harry Lauder sais, ah jist intend tae keep right on to the end of the road ...
  • "Blowing It: Searching for the Inner Man" (Chapter 4, Story 4)

• Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n aw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.
  • "Blowing It: House Arrest" (Chapter 4, Story 5)

• Ah thought that every cunt over twenty was a toss an no worth speakin tae, until ah hit twenty. The mair ah see, the mair ah think ah wis right. After that it's aw ugly compromise, aw timid surrender, progressively until death.
  • "Blowing It: Bang to Rites" (Chapter 4, Story 6)

• He had noted that with older people. They often try to control younger, more popular and vivacious people; usually due to the fact that they are jealous of the qualities the younger people have and they lack. These inadequacies are disguised with a benign, protective attitude.

• 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?

The Acid House (1994)

• Ah jist shrugged, -- Well, as one anarchist plumber sais tae the other: smash the cistern.
  • A conversation between plumbers.
  • "A Blockage in the System"

• That cunt Nietzsche wis wide ay the mark whin he sais ah wis deid. Ah'm no deid; ah jist dinnae gie a fuck. It's no fir me tae sort every cunt's problems oot. Nae other cunt gies a fuck so how should ah? Eh?
  • God talking to Boab, the story's main protagonist, in a pub.
  • "The Granton Star Cause"

• Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.
  • The narrator talking about Ange after they are released from prison.
  • "Stoke Newington Blues"

• The duty sergeant was going through his routine of asking each brawling set of prisoners who the Billy and who the Tim was. If the handshake is right he will let the Billy go and slap the Tim around a bit. That way everybody's happy. The Billy gets to feel superior and delude himself that being a non-churchgoing 'protestant' is somehow important; the Tim gets to feel persecuted and indulge his paranoia about masonic conspiracies; the sergeant gets to slap the Tim around.
  • "The Two Philosophers"

• 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.
  • A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Associates as Opiates" (Chapter 3)

• That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.
  • A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Marriage" (Chapter 13)
  • Darren and Brian explaining their own notions of anarchy to Avril.

• Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.
  • A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Marriage" (Chapter 13)

Interviews

• You can't just have stuff that is free and escapist, you have to have stuff that is confrontational as well. You need stuff that is mystical but you need the realism too.
  • "Alan Black Interviews Irvine Welsh for 3AM", 3:AM Magazine, 2004