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" In America, Miramax are using a 'New York Times' review that said 'Trainspotting' makes 'Kids' look like a 1960s episode of 'Sesame Street.' "

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" 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 come up with a blurb at the beginning, but the book will always be completely different by the time it's finished. They say, 'Where's the book you were going to write?' And I say, 'Forget about it. It doesn't exist.' "

" I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know? "

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

" When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them. "

" You know what it's like: you don't want to read your old books again. All you can see are the flaws, what you would do differently. "

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

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

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

" I'm a failed musician rather than a successful writer. "

" 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. "

" When you grow up in a place, you always think it's mundane. Then you travel around and live in different places, and you realise that you've got it the wrong way 'round. "

" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "

" There is a kind of mysticism to writing. "

" The older you get, the less physically and mentally robust you become. "

" 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. "

" Rebellion is always going to fascinate, as it's always packaged in a very safe way. "

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it. "

" What worries me is the professionalism of everything. "

Professionalism

" Writing has been handed to me on a plate. "

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

" Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books. "

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

" Words should have the power to inform and to move, not the power to send people scurrying away. But if you attach that much emotional energy to a word, it gives people the power to hurt each other. "