Irvine Welsh

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

“Writing has been handed to me on a plate.”

“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.”

“Boxing gives you such a good workout, although I've stopped sparring. When your hand speed goes, you're going to get caught, and you can't afford to take cumulative smacks on the chops when you're a writer.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“I'm a failed musician rather than a successful writer.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

“The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.”

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

“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.”

“Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.”

“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.”

“What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.”

“There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.”

“We have to give feminism a shot. Out of sheer self preservation, we have to stand aside and let women run the show.”