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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there. "

" 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 ironic that the growth of Scottish nationalism has precipitated in the English the sort of hand-wringing the Scots have always done over who they are. "

" I'm not really a mainstream novelist! "

" 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. "

" In America, Miramax are using a 'New York Times' review that said 'Trainspotting' makes 'Kids' look like a 1960s episode of 'Sesame Street.' "

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

" I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown. "

" Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Hugo Boss is my kind of label. "

" Filmmaking is a much more collaborative thing than literature, so you know you're going to be working with a group of people at the start. You know it's going to be a compromise. "

" 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 make out a play list for every character and buy the records they would listen to; it helps me find their personas. What they play, where they stay, who they lay, is my matrix for character development. "

" The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel. "

" 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. "

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

" There is a kind of mysticism to writing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity. "

" 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. "