Irvine Welsh
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.Collection: Graduation
I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Travel
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.Collection: Sad
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.
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.
From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy.
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.
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.
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.
So many people have become divorced from the system, criminalised by their lifestyle.
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.
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.
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.
It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there.
Hugo Boss is my kind of label.
I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.
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.
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.
Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown.
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.
I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships.
I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
I wanted to capture the excitement of house music, almost like a four-four beat, and the best way to do that was to use a language that was rhythmic and performative.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The first job of a writer is to be honest.
There is a kind of mysticism to writing.
What worries me is the professionalism of everything.
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.
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.
Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.
It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element.
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.
It's that kind of thing that readers have. I have it as a reader myself: that expectation that the writer will be that person. Then I meet other writers and realize that they're not.
It's like nothing's really happening. Our culture is almost dead.
It's where you come from that's the strange, exotic, quirky, mad place.
When people write a novel, they want to have that reach and that impact. To get it with a first novel, you can either see it as an albatross or a calling card.
I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it.
I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know?
I just want to get on and tell stories.
We have to give feminism a shot. Out of sheer self preservation, we have to stand aside and let women run the show.
Historically, men have a hard time getting onboard with feminism, but I think that's changing.
'Ulysses' is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new.
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.
I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that.
Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it.