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" I think the silences we have on some issues are inductive of the fact that we need to write about them more, but I think there are some issues you have to write in a sensitive way and in a way that respects the reality of the situation. If you can't do that, you should leave them alone. "

Irvine Welsh

Think

You

Alone

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" I think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence. "

Irvine Welsh

People

" It's been a good thing for me to try and understand America. "

Irvine Welsh

Understand

Try

" 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. "

" Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown. "

" I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves. "

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

Irvine Welsh

Nonfiction

Writing

" People either think I'm this totally savage, idiot-savant genius guy who's lucked out or they think I'm a super-manipulative crafty businessman, this kind of MBA guy who's spotted a gap in the market and knows how to create a product for it. It's flattering, but I've not got that much of a gameplan. "

" 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. "

Irvine Welsh

Yourself

Circumstances

" 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. "

" The '90s was a decade of mundane market-consumer nothingness where there was nothing coming up from the streets; you just had someone in an office deciding what was cool. "

Irvine Welsh

You

Someone

" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "

" There's something about the modern era where it's very hard to transgress - we're all so online, easier to track by mobile phone - so you have people who do it on your behalf. "

" 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. "

Irvine Welsh

See

Rest

" It's very hard to transgress; we have the furniture of transgression without the imagery and iconography to actually do it. "

" I would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.' "

" We want to feel hyper-alive, and it's like, the more cartoonish and grotesque the level we can operate at, the better. It's like the world we live in has become quite safe in a lot of ways, and it has become harder to genuinely transgress. But the desire to transgress is a real feeling. "

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

" 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. "

" It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there. "

Irvine Welsh

Still

Immersed

" When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies. "

" I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are. "

" There is nothing, really, that I wouldn't write about, and I do write about a lot of grim things. "

" People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath. "

" Underground 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. "

" It's where you come from that's the strange, exotic, quirky, mad place. "

" Dean Owens is Scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter. "

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

" 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.' "

" Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos. "

" 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. "