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" Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" I have a lot of successful musician pals, and as I get older, I find that I'm lucky to be a writer. I have great anonymity compared to musicians who sell the same number of records as I do books. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I used to sit on the Circle Line and go 'round and 'round and write. "

" 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.' "

" It's really odd that I've got this kind of sullen reputation - I never saw myself that way. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society. "

" 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've been doing a bit of screenwriting and producing, and even a bit of directing. "

" I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology. "

" 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. "

" '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. "

" It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places. "

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