Irvine Welsh Quotes

My first novel was a critical success in a matter of weeks.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

I had a few stories and longer pieces published, but my first proper novel came in 2003, called 'Dead I Well May Be.'

My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.

Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.

I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that, as a novelist, you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.

Winning the Whitbread was a very major thing for me. I'd always been well reviewed, but this made me widely read.

I always grew up with the idea that in order to be a successful writer, I should have a book published.

I was elated when I found out my first novel, 'Leaving Patrick,' about a woman who walks out on her husband, was going to be published.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them.

I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second.

There is no magic in all the world like that magic when you sell your first bit of writing.

The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me.

Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

At 18, my first short story was published - I was paid a penny a word by a science fiction magazine. I continued to write, and five years later I published my first novel, 'Sweetwater.'

I feel lucky I didn't become that newspaper cartoonist I wanted to be because in the U.S. so many newspapers have suffered circulation declines, and some have folded. What's fun about being an author is I reach a much bigger audience, and there is something special about launching a book you've penned.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.

John Updike's first published book was a collection of poems.