Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Irvine Welsh

"I'm working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together"

About this Quote

Restlessness is the point here: Irvine Welsh presenting himself not as a solemn literary brand but as a working creative who can’t stay in one lane. The sentence hustles. It’s packed with practical obstacles (“decks cleared”), institutional prestige (“screenplay… for the BBC”), and then a quick pivot to something messier and more communal (“studio with my pals”). That whiplash is the subtext: Welsh is signaling that the high-status gig isn’t the destination, just the thing he has to finish before he gets back to the fun.

It also smuggles in a quiet manifesto about authorship. Welsh became famous writing about club culture, chemical euphoria, and the grim economics under them. Here he’s insisting he still belongs to that ecosystem, not merely as an observer but as a participant. “Pals” isn’t throwaway slang; it’s a claim of allegiance to a non-hierarchical, collaborative scene, the opposite of the lonely-genius novelist myth. “Put down some more tracks” borrows the language of labor, not inspiration, as if creativity is closer to shift work than muse-chasing.

The intent reads partly defensive, partly playful: don’t box me in as the Trainspotting guy who graduated into respectable TV. The BBC nods toward legitimacy; the “strong dance single” counters with immediacy, sweat, and the chase for a hit. He’s framing his career as movement between systems - public broadcaster polish and club-floor velocity - because that tension is where his cultural credibility lives.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
More Quotes by Irvine Add to List
Im working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Scotland Flag

Irvine Welsh (born September 27, 1961) is a Novelist from Scotland.

25 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes