Quote

I can't stand still I find it very difficult to sit around and do nothing. I've got to have projects on the go because the devil makes work for idle hands. I've got to be going forward all the time.

Irvine Welsh

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TAGS & TOPICS

Irvine Welsh
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: September 27
Author
Film Actor
Novelist
Playwright
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Nothing
Stand
Going
Difficult
Work
Makes
Time
Hands
Around
Idle
Stills
Projects
Still
Devil
Find
Forward

More quotes by Irvine Welsh

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I'd always done a lot of sniffing glue as a kid. I was very interested in glue, and then I went to lager and speed, and I drifted into heroin because as a kid growing up everybody told me, 'don't smoke marijuana, it will kill you'.
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I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.
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In some ways, you can say that at any time in any writer's career: 'He might have run out of ideas.'
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[Ecstasy] had its flaws, but again it was shot on a low budget, and they did well. It's not in the same league as Filth.
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The books that are really valuable are the books that evoke a sense of place.
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If you have no drugs, then you have revolution, and then drugs will be the only thing stopping that.
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I think just getting up and getting to the desk is a big thing. If you can do that, you're in the zone because there're so many distractions that can stop you. From my bedroom to my office isn't really that far, but I have to go via the kitchen and there's so many things that can stop me and interrupt me.
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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.
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Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.
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Choose life … I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?
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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.
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I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.
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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.
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It was the books I started reading. It was the music I started listening to. It was the television I started watching. I found myself thinking again. I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn't. Wen all this is in your head it has to come out into your life. If it doesn't, you get crushed. I'm not going to get crushed.
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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
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Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.
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The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.
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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.
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In the cross-over, you get to a point where you realize that you've got all this genetic inheritance, and you've got all this social conditioning, but there is a point where you do have to make a choice, and that's the optimist in me: you have the freedom to make a choice about how you are going to be, and what you're going to do.
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Thir must be less tae life than this
Irvine Welsh