Irvine Welsh Quotes

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

I, in the end, make art for myself.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader.

When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.

Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

I started writing because I found I could spend more time in my own imagination by doing that than I could by reading.

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I tend not to think about the reading public at all, or the business, when I'm writing.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I wrote ghost stories because I'd always enjoyed reading them, and they seemed to be fizzling out... I don't take them terribly seriously. It's like a cake, with ingredients.

The first draft is all about freedom, and if loyalty is in question, it is only my loyalty to the characters and situations on the page. All the worries about where the material may have sprung from or what so-and-so might think can be dealt with later.

I just write what I want to write.

I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.

I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.

I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.