“Can you taste it Bruce? Can you taste the filth, the dirt, the oily blackness of that fossil fuel in our mouth as you choke and gag and spit it out? Do you still hear his voice in your head urging you to eat? Eat, eat eat. Your mother's cries. Do you hear them? You should be Bruce. Because I know that it's never left you alone. Now you can eat what you want to eat. For me, for you, for all the others. Now you can consume to your heart's content or your soul's destruction, whichever comes first. So eat.”

Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and filmmaker

Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and filmmaker. His work is closely tied to Scotland, where many of his novels and stories are set, and he is known for writing about working-class life. His fiction is marked by blunt, often unsparing portraits of addiction, alienation, limited opportunity and boredom. Those themes recur across his novels and short stories, which focus on the pressures and details of everyday life in working-class Scotland.