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

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" I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information. "

" 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. "

" You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have. "

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

" 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. "

" What worries me is the professionalism of everything. "

Professionalism

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" I'm probably a natural uncle. I can take the kids out and have fun with them and look after them, and I can be Mr. Popular. But actually having to do the grind? That stuff just doesn't appeal at all. "

" 'Ulysses' is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm always watching people over a short time frame, putting them in an extreme position. Sometimes you don't see the humanity in a person because the time frame is so short and the circumstance so extreme. "

" It was around the summer of 1982 when the drug problem really impacted. It became a lifestyle rather than a recreation. When you start lying and stealing, you cannot con yourself you're in control any more. "

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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