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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

" A lot of my characters are anti-heroes that became heroes. "

" 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. "

" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "

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

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

" 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 left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence - laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter. "

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

" Historically, men have a hard time getting onboard with feminism, but I think that's changing. "

" 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. "

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

" Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 enjoy the freedom of the blank page. "

" Hugo Boss is my kind of label. "

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

" Politicians are so... detested; they don't actually walk amongst people now. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm the worst employee in the world. I'll cheat and steal time and resources from my employer, although I'll con everybody into believing I'm essential to the operation. "

" Sometimes I work purely 8-12 shifts, banging stuff into the computer. Other times, my office is like a scene from a detective movie, with Post-it Notes, plans, photographs all stuck on the walls and arrows going everywhere, and it's 4 A.M. "

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

" A lot of people pulled me up after 'Trainspotting' for its absence of politics, but the argument I make is that the absence of politics is political as well. "

" 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'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. "

" That's the kind of consumer society we live in. We're always looking for the next product that's going to change your life instead of just going out and changing your life. "