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" It strikes me as one of nature's greatest jokes that the types of food we all like to eat more than anything (especially in winter) are the very things that cause the most insane weight gain - mounds of fluffy mashed potato, hot, thickly buttered toast, huge, steaming bowls of pasta, great big... actually, I'll stop there. "

John Niven

Great

Food

Winter

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" When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want. "

" I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school. "

" I go to the Caribbean for a month every January with hand baggage only. All you need is a passport and a credit card. "

" As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be. "

" Don't get me wrong: there are aspects of buying music online that I love. Instantly being able to hear a song the moment it crosses your mind? Where's the downside? However, I do feel for those too young to remember the thrill of going record shopping. "

John Niven

Mind

Love

" I've never understood why the end of a relationship - especially one involving children - has to immediately signal a descent into hatred and toxicity. "

" If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people out there toiling over your unpublished manuscript, trying to make your way across that vast ocean in a bathtub, I can only say this to you: keep paddling. Well, either that or start vlogging. "

" If pushed to say what I like about Elizabeth, who, as I'm sure most of you know, overtook Queen Victoria this week to become our longest-serving monarch, it would be her uncomplaining, getting-on-with-it ethic. "

" I remembered being young in the late '70s and early '80s and growing up at the height of the Cold War. I remembered how scared I was of nuclear weapons, how often I though about them and about the possibility of everything and everyone I knew vanishing in a second in temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun. "

" It's one of the hardest things in the world to sustain a monogamous relationship for many years. People out there who have been with their partners for 30 years or more - I salute you. But it's just as hard to admit something isn't working and then try to manage a civilised separation as best as you can. "

" I understand that some people like certain things more than others, but by the time you are an adult, you really should be able to sit down and eat pretty much anything. "

" I have an iPhone. I like it for the camera and the fact that you can have your email and Twitter and all that stuff in one place. However, unlike most men I know, I hate buying new technology. "

" The Clash had a unique, special relationship with Scotland. Perhaps it was something to do with the energy, anger and beauty in their music. In Scotland at that time, there was a lot of to be angry about. And a great need of some energy and beauty. "

" I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together. "

" On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre? "

" You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To state the obvious, as an atheist, the hymn sheet is no use to me. So I just stand there, looking straight ahead or up at the ceiling, and do nothing. "

John Niven

You

Words

" I do shamefully little for charity, and I always talk about it when I do. "

" I've often found myself looking fondly at the Valentine's cultures in other countries. South Korea, for instance - where women must give chocolate to men. "

" I am, it is safe to say, not a practical man. The few attempts I've made to hammer in a nail have ended in broken thumbs, burst pipes, and water spraying everywhere with the house on fire. "

" Forget worrying about the break-up of celebrities you don't even know. I have long since given up trying to figure out why even my closest friends split up. "

" I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing. "

" I'm very fond of Glasgow, particularly the West End. The whole stretch of the west coast of Scotland from Loch Lomond up through Mallaig to the Kyle of Localsh is so beautiful. "

" I spend a fair bit of time in Los Angeles, and there is much I love about the place - the weather, the food, the beaches and the golf. And a few things I don't. Like the way an enormous number of mentally ill people seem to be forced to live on the streets with little or nothing in the way of government assistance. "

" My family went to Toronto to visit relatives when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time we had ever been abroad. This was the early Eighties, and I remember the impossible glamour of air travel - my mum spending days trying to decide what she was going to wear on the plane. "

" We live in a crazily youth-orientated world nowadays. It's a trickle-down thing. We see pictures of lithe, attractive celebrity couples such as Brad and Angelina or the Beckhams cavorting around, covered in tattoos, stomachs as flat as the singing in early 'X Factor' rounds. "

" I love England. I live and work here. My children have grown up here. I see no conflict between this and praying that my countrymen in Scotland never have to live another day under Conservative rule from London. "

" I do often feel that the single greatest thing about my job is that I don't have a boss. I'm like an overweight Han Solo: I take orders from just one person - me. "

" I've forgotten the birthdays of everyone close to me. I have forgotten to pay bills, file tax returns on time, go to meetings, and, every week, I forget to put the bins out. But I have never forgotten I want my lunch. "

John Niven

Week

Forget

" I love watching the Oscars and seeing everybody saying all that 'it's an honour just to be nominated' rubbish. Then you see their faces when the split screen comes up as the winner is announced - the losers are all smiling through gritted teeth and looking as if they just swallowed half a pound of soor plooms. "

" It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block. "