"You can't lie to your soul."

"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."

"I'm not running away, I'm moving on."

"Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them."

"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."

"You were what you were and you are what you are. Fuck that regrets bullshit."

"Mates are a waste of fucking time. They are always ready to drag you down tae their level of social, sexual and intellectual mediocrity."

"This is what being alive's all about, all those fucked up feelings. You've got to have them; when you stop, watch out."

"His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with."

"When two people were in love you had to leave them to it. Especially when you weren't in love and wished that you were. That could embarrass. That could hurt."

"Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism."

"Everything in the street today seems soft focus."

"Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough"

"You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia."

"Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe."

"Same rules apply."

"Thir must be less tae life than this"

"Don't let jesus in. AA is just one obsession replaced with another"

"Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence."

"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."

"But even Es and cocaine, over the years they blow holes in your brain, rob you of your memories, your past. Which is fair enough, convenient even."

"I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination."

"Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace"

"It's easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt's got shite fir blood."

"How did it make you feel?"

"It wis like auld times, but in a sense that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed."

"When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again."

"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."

"Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know."

"... 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."

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"With the gift of faith, we move on."

"The best way ah knew tae strike a chord without compromising too much tae the sickening hypocrisy, perversely peddled as decency, which fills the room, is tae stick tae the clich s."

"But ah cannae even endorse these sentiments as they are at best peripheral tae the moment."

"Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror."

"I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribing the dogs."

"-Fiona, this is my mate, Frank Begbie. Or Franco. Or Beggars. Or the Beggar Boy. Or the Generalissmo. Or Psychotic Bullying Prick."

"It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments."

"I reach into my bag and I pull out my claw hammer."

"Ah didnae really know much aboot women. Ah didnae really know much aboot anything."

"Living like this is a full-time business."

"His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more"

"— Square go then smart cunt!"

"We're all like the slaves in the fields now, putting on the front that says 'Everything's fine, boss' while we worry about how to make ends meet."

"The politics of the last twenty years in Britain are liars' politics. The problem is we are ruled by the weak and the small-minded, who are too stupid to know that they are weak and small-minded."

"We tend to be rather murky little ponds, containing many layers of suspended dirt and grime and our greatest depths are stirred by the strangest of currents."

"Drugs are always fun."

"Money gives you the luxury of not caring about it. You can affect to find it crass and vulgar, but see how crass and vulgar it is when there’s none of it in your pocket."

"I wouldn't care about hurting myself or anybody else. Because I know now that doing things doesn't hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them"

"His mind raced through past horrors experienced first hand and from the accounts of others. He mentally flipped through a grim database which contained everything from vegan flatmates to psychotic pimps."