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

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" It's like nothing's really happening. Our culture is almost dead. "

" 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. "

" When people write a novel, they want to have that reach and that impact. To get it with a first novel, you can either see it as an albatross or a calling card. "

" So many people have become divorced from the system, criminalised by their lifestyle. "

" 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.' "

" Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process. "

" I enjoy the freedom of the blank page. "

" People in Scotland want the parliament but don't give a toss about the elections. "

" 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 think the novel is at one end of the art-entertainment continuum - the play in the middle - while TV and cinema veer a bit more towards entertainment. "

" Before I started writing, I'd never read much fiction. I was more interested in non-fiction. I'm taking the same approach to theatre: I can operate from a position of ignorance and make up my own rules instead of being bound by customs and practice. "

" I'm working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together. "

" I wanted to capture the excitement of house music, almost like a four-four beat, and the best way to do that was to use a language that was rhythmic and performative. "

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

" You can't satirise darts, because it's hyper-real as it is; there's already enough over-the-top madness to it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" '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. "

" When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music. "

" I go to the gym and work through a routine. But if you see someone with a personal trainer, you know they do 10 times more than you do. You give up your sense of identity. If you watch 'The Biggest Loser,' you see people give up their identity to become something else. "

" It's that kind of thing that readers have. I have it as a reader myself: that expectation that the writer will be that person. Then I meet other writers and realize that they're not. "

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

" The idea of just sitting at home on Facebook worries me. I think we should all get out more. "

" I think what you call 'metropolitan America' - as in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles - I think there's more awareness of the atypical, while in more traditional Britain, there's the kitchen-sink dramas and thrillers. It's more formulaic. "

" One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity. "

" The idea is not enough. And the most annoying thing for me as a writer is that people will come up to me and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea for a book. I'm not a writer, but I've got a great story.' "

" I'd always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn't getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel. "

" I think that every project offers an opportunity to reinvent process as well as content. "

" From 'Trainspotting' to 'Acid House,' I moved from urban realism into fantasy. "

" I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that. "