First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"[Monologue that is a reference to the beginning of the first film, to Veronika in a restaurant] "Choose life." "Choose life" was a well-meaning slogan from a 1980s antidrug campaign. And we used to add things to it. So I might say, for example, choose... Designer lingerie in the vain hope of kicking some life back into a dead relationship. Choose handbags. Choose high-heeled shoes. Cashmere and silk to make yourself feel what passes for happy. Choose an iPhone made in China by a woman who jumped out of a window, and stick it in the pocket of your jacket fresh from a South Asian firetrap. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and a thousand other ways to spew your bile across people you've never met. Choose updating your profile. Tell the world what you had for breakfast and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, desperate to believe that you don't look as bad as they do. Choose live-blogging from your first wank to your last breath. Human interaction reduced to nothing more than data. Choose ten things you never knew about celebrities who'd had surgery. Choose screaming about abortion. Choose rape jokes, slut shaming, revenge porn, and an endless tide of depressing misogyny. Choose 9/11 never happened, and if it did, it was the Jews. Choose a zero-hour contract and a two-hour journey to work, and choose the same for your kids, only worse. And maybe tell yourself it's better that they never happened. And then sit back and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody's fucking kitchen. Choose unfulfilled promise and wishing you'd done it all differently. Choose never learning from your own mistakes. Choose watching history repeat itself. Choose the slow reconciliation towards what you can get rather than what you always hoped for. Settle for less and keep a brave face on it. Choose disappointment. And choose losing the ones you loved. And as they fall from view, a piece of you dies with them. Until you can see that one day in the future, piece by piece, they will all be gone. And there'll be nothing left of you to call alive or dead. Choose your future, Veronika. Choose life. Anyway, it amused us at the time."
"[Veronika counting the money] And what does he think I am? A whore? He can just pay me off 4000 pounds, not even the interest? What am I supposed to do with that? Buy a fucking time machine? Live my life all over again? Maybe this time without being robbed by my best fucking friend!"
"[Renton has just saved Spud from asphyxiating] You ruined my life, and now you're ruining my fucking death too!"
"What do they think I am eh? Do they think I am like one of these cunts in the bible that live forever?"
"These are not goals. These are political statements. It's still there. I've been there myself several times. You know nothing. You understand nothing. You live in the past. Where I come from the past is something to forget but here it's all you talk about. You are clearly so in love with each other that I feel awkward in your company. Instead of looking at me you should get naked and fuck each other."
"Ewan McGregor - Mark "Rent Boy" Renton"
"Ewen Bremner - Daniel "Spud" Murphy"
"Jonny Lee Miller - Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson"
"Robert Carlyle - Francis "Franco" Begbie"
"Kevin McKidd - Tommy MacKenzie"
"Kyle Fitzpatrick - Fergus"
"Elek Kish - Dozo"
"Bradley Welsh - Mr. Doyle"
"Kelly Macdonald - Diane Coulston"
"Anjela Nedyalkova - Veronika Kovach"
"Pauline Lynch - Lizzy"
"James Cosmo - Mr Renton"
"Eileen Nicholas - Mrs. Renton"
"Shirley Henderson - Gail Houston"
"Irvine Welsh - Mikey Forrester"
"Simon Weir - Jailhoose"
"Steven Robertson - Stoddart"
"Scot Greenan - Frank Jr."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.