Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is. "

Related Quotes:

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I just want to get on and tell stories. "

" Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" In my flat in Chicago, I've got this big room with an office in the corner and a balcony so I can watch people go by. "

" It's that kind of thing that readers have. I have it as a reader myself: that expectation that the writer will be that person. Then I meet other writers and realize that they're not. "

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

" People either think I'm this totally savage, idiot-savant genius guy who's lucked out or they think I'm a super-manipulative crafty businessman, this kind of MBA guy who's spotted a gap in the market and knows how to create a product for it. It's flattering, but I've not got that much of a gameplan. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "