BookBrief Logo
Trainspotting
Goodreads ratings
4.07 / 5
Add to Your Library

Sign in to save this book to your reading lists

"Trainspotting" Quotes

A group of heroin addicts navigate the gritty streets of Edinburgh in this raw and darkly comic novel.

Quotes

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 a 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.

Irvine Welsh

It's not worth it. Heroin screws you up.

Irvine Welsh

We took a beating, and a hospital visit and imprisonment seemed in order.

Irvine Welsh

It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth!

Irvine Welsh

I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in the post. That's for sure. I'm in the junkie limbo at the moment. Too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake, but the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain and craving. A need like nothing else I've ever known will soon take hold of me. It's on its way.

Irvine Welsh

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. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it.

Irvine Welsh

Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose ye dinnae do whit's expected of ye? Suppose ye jist want tae do whit ye want tae dae?

Irvine Welsh

When you're not on top, how do you know how high you can go?

Irvine Welsh

Relinquishing junk. Stage one, preparation. For this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium, which I've already procured from my mother, who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way, also a drug addict. And now I'm ready. All I need is a shot of vitamin B12.

Irvine Welsh

People think it's all about misery and desperation and pain and agony, but they forget to mention the pleasure.

Irvine Welsh