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" I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction. "

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" Writing is such a good thing to do because you can't really get bored with it. If you're bored with writing, you're bored with life. "

" It's very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own circumstances, but one thing I do know about is that I grew up surrounded by storytellers. "

" Boxing gives you such a good workout, although I've stopped sparring. When your hand speed goes, you're going to get caught, and you can't afford to take cumulative smacks on the chops when you're a writer. "

" Politicians are so... detested; they don't actually walk amongst people now. "

" The cultural war of words has actually been won by the most dispossessed people in the Western world, the urban American blacks. "

" When I left school at 16, I became an apprentice television and radio technician, and was paid £17 a week, which was decent money in 1976. But the job turned sour when I gave myself an electric shock while repairing a television set. "

" The first job of a writer is to be honest. "

" I used to sit on the Circle Line and go 'round and 'round and write. "

" Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process. "

" If you're going to do something that's going to cause offence to people, you're always going to get a reaction. "

" A lot of my characters are anti-heroes that became heroes. "

" I'm trying to make really flawed characters that have got redeeming features so people can say, 'I don't really like that character, but I can understand a bit where they've come from.' "

" The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel. "

" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "

" Everyone needs some kind of compelling drama in their life, basically. "

" I'm the worst employer I could wish for because I push myself hard. "

" When you go away, you see where you come from in a different light. I see Scotland, and the rest of Britain, as much more exotic than I used to. "

" 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. "

" When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement. "

" I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence. "

" I make out a play list for every character and buy the records they would listen to; it helps me find their personas. What they play, where they stay, who they lay, is my matrix for character development. "

" What worries me is the professionalism of everything. "

Professionalism

" Sometimes a book influences me because it winds me up. There'll be something that gets under my skin and makes me think that I can do better. "

" Writers in Britain aren't really celebrities. You become kind of a darling of a small set. "

" I just love the weather. I live on Miami Beach, which is all boutique hotels and cocktails. I do sometimes go along to smart parties in my white suit, but I wouldn't really recognise any famous people if they were there because I'm not very good at star-spotting. "

" Filmmaking is a much more collaborative thing than literature, so you know you're going to be working with a group of people at the start. You know it's going to be a compromise. "

" We've become used to processing images that are part of the non-linear narrative theory. I think there's a thinner line between fantasy and normality. People spend much more time in their own heads now. There's so much to conform to, so many influences coming at you. "

" 'True Detective' was the last show I got crazy about, with its 'Silence of the Lambs'-style landscape and those strip mall badlands of America. "

" Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it. "

" As soon as you've written it, you're thinking about how it can move into different mediums. "