Irvine Welsh Quotes

Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal.

For me, I'm constantly writing stuff that is what I'm dealing with on a personal, psychological level. And I think that I bring that to whatever I'm doing, whether it's being an actor or a writer or whatever it is I'm doing. I think you can't help but do that.

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

Why do we make records? Because we want to say something. Why are you in art? Because you want to say something. The second you don't have anything to say, you stop making art - you might start making product. And I'm interested in being an artist.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.

I wrote songs when I was little, and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

I love cinema and creating new things, but essentially, I am creating all this because I want people to see it.

With acting, it wouldn't be about money: it would be about taking my life experiences and using them to create art.

Writing's another expression of art, really, that I'm just kind of discovering as I go.

I don’t have a problem baring my emotions in music. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad to have music in my life. I’m pretty resilient as far as being a human being. A lot of songs write themselves.

I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.

I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.

If I don't stay creative and if I don't stay in the studio and keep writing and recording, I get kind of depressed. I can't quite remember what I'm supposed to be doing with myself.

I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.