Trainspotting Quotes

“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Love does not exist, it's like religion, the state wants you to believe in that kind of crap so they can control you, and f**k your head up. ”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Mates are a waste of fucking time. They are always ready to drag you down tae their level of social, sexual and intellectual mediocrity.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Fuckin failures in a country of failures. Its nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant healthy society to be colonised by. No..we are ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wis the shite thev got. Ah hate the Scots.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Thir must be less tae life than this”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. I didn’t believe that at the time, but now I do. By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“The train was nearly twenty minutes late, an excellent performance by British Rail standards.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“The fact that you use the term "cunt" in the same breath as "sexist", shows that you display the same muddled, fucked-up thinking oan this issue as you do oan everything else.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“... Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“It's easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt's got shite fir blood.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Ah walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when you’ve been away. It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“You just want tae fuck up on drugs so that everyone'll think how deep and fucking complex you are. It's pathetic, and fucking boring.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but ah fear that this internal sea is gaunnae subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in ma body.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“The pit of melancholy was a bottomless one, and he was descending fast, falling further away from the good times. Such times often seemed tantalisingly within reach; he could see them, going on all around him. His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“It was Begbie who ensured he could never return. He had done what he wanted to do. He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He'd stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Renton looks at her and sees her pain and anger. It cuts him
up. It confuses him. Kelly has a great sense of humour. What's wrong with her? The knee–jerk
thought: Wrong time of the' month is forming in his head when he looks about and picks up the
intonations of the laughter around the bar. It's not funny laughter.
This is lynch mob laughter.
How was ah tae know, he thinks. How the fuck was ah tae know?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“But ah cannae even endorse these sentiments as they are at best peripheral tae the moment.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“On the issue of drugs, we wir classical liberals, vehemently opposed tae state intervention in any form.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“They mean well, and they mean well tae me, but there's nae way under the sun that they can
appreciate what ah feel, what ah need.
Protect me from those who wish tae help us.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting