That's the kind of consumer society we live in. We're always looking for the next product that's going to change your life instead of just going out and changing your life.
Irvine WelshRead
A lot of people pulled me up after 'Trainspotting' for its absence of politics, but the argument I make is that the absence of politics is political as well.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that not addressing political issues can itself be a political statement.
Irvine Welsh highlights the idea that the decision to exclude politics from a narrative or work of art can be a conscious and political choice in itself. This perspective challenges the assumption that all art must engage with political themes, proposing instead that silence or absence can convey its own message about societal issues and human experiences.
Themes
PoliticsArtAbsenceMessageNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of art in society, this quote can be used to argue for the value of non-political narratives.
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All quotes βUnderground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground.
Irvine WelshRead
I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.
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His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.
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It was the books I started reading. It was the music I started listening to. It was the television I started watching. I found myself thinking again. I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn't. Wen all this is in your head it has to come out into your life. If it doesn't, you get crushed. I'm not going to get crushed.
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There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.
Irvine WelshRead
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