Stand oan a line n brek yir spine,
stand oan a crack n brek yir back.

Never goat the difference between the two cause yir snookered either wey, but mibbe that's what it's aboot; sortay pure life in Scotland, likesay.

It's amazing how seedy scumbags (the press) can write shit, and demented retards (the public) suddenly go up in arms and then opportunistic slime (the politicians) jump right on the bandwagon. Such is British life.

[A cop talked one of Renton's friends out of a suicidal jump from a high-rise residence building and apparently told the guy that life will get easier and he should not just throw it away]

-Does [life] get easier, I mean, [Renton] arks urgently.

The cop shakes his heid. -Does it fuck; it gets bleeding worse. All that happens is that the expectations you have of life fall. You just get used to all the shit.

Renton looks as perturbed as ah feel, and we gaze at each other and realise that the cop isnae fucking joking. Ah think about poor Spud. Renton looks starkly at [the cop]. -What if ye can't get used to it?

The copper looks back up tae the flats, shrugs his shoulders and curls his bottom lip doon. -Well, that window's still gonna be there.

- It isnae aboot helping, it's aboot being. If being Scottish is aboot one thing, it's aboot gittin fucked up, Renton explains, working the needle slowly into his flesh.
- Tae us intoxication isnae just a huge laugh, or even a basic human right. It's a way ay life, a political philosophy. Rabbie Burns said it: whiskey and freedom gang thegither. Whatever happens in the future tae the economy, whatever fucking government's in power, rest assured we'll still be pissin it up and shooting shit intae ourselves, he announces, pulsing with glorious anticipation as he sucks his dark blood back into the barrel, then lets his ravenous veins drink the concoction.

Drinking is a young man's game, best done when you are free from nagging thoughts of your own mortality. Irvine Welch, in: Skagboys.