Irvine Welsh Quotes

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

I'm big into social studies, the humanities. I really love history and world issues and philosophy and law.

I love history, cultural and religious studies, philosophy, photography and traveling.

I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.

Literature has always been a part of my life. I studied history and literature in college. My mother is a novelist; I grew up around books.

I almost got a psychology degree, I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion, epistomology, and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.

I guess the important thing for young writers is to read.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

Like most authors, I also love to read.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.

I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

I read more books for research purposes, whether it's a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!

I don't read that many novels, I'm more of a nonfiction fan.

Maybe philosophy - I love talking about ideas. Or maybe art history. I was thinking about psychology, then I got really afraid because everybody says it's terribly boring.

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.

Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

On a trip to Cabo San Lucas, I was obsessed with Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History.' We were staying at the Esperanza hotel doing all sorts of lovely things, but I couldn't wait to get back to the book at night.

I've stopped reading fiction. I don't read it at all. I read other things: history, biography. I don't have the same interest in fiction that I once did.