It's very hard to transgress; we have the furniture of transgression without the imagery and iconography to actually do it.
— Irvine Welsh
Hugo Boss is my kind of label.
'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.
Dean Owens is Scotland's most engaging and haunting singer-songwriter.
Writers in Britain aren't really celebrities. You become kind of a darling of a small set.
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.
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.
People should be able to express their culture without getting into all that chauvinistic thing.
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.
Politicians are so... detested; they don't actually walk amongst people now.
If you're going to do something that's going to cause offence to people, you're always going to get a reaction.
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.
A lot of my characters are anti-heroes that became heroes.
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.'
I've been doing a bit of screenwriting and producing, and even a bit of directing.
You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness.
Rebellion is always going to fascinate, as it's always packaged in a very safe way.
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 would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.'
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'm not really a mainstream novelist!
We've become used to processing images that are part of the non-linear narrative theory. I think there's a thinner line between fantasy and normality. People spend much more time in their own heads now. There's so much to conform to, so many influences coming at you.
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.
People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.
People in Scotland want the parliament but don't give a toss about the elections.
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.
How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified.
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.
The older you get, the less physically and mentally robust you become.
It's really odd that I've got this kind of sullen reputation - I never saw myself that way.
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.
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
The cultural war of words has actually been won by the most dispossessed people in the Western world, the urban American blacks.
I've eaten ice cream from all over the world, but until you've tasted Graham's from Geneva, Illinois, you haven't had ice cream at all.
Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown.
One of the things you want as a successful writer is the anonymity.
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.
I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.
Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.
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.
When a town doesn't have a book store, it is like something is missing, and unfortunately, fewer and fewer have them.
There is nothing, really, that I wouldn't write about, and I do write about a lot of grim things.
What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.
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.'
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 think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence.
In America, Miramax are using a 'New York Times' review that said 'Trainspotting' makes 'Kids' look like a 1960s episode of 'Sesame Street.'
Everyone needs some kind of compelling drama in their life, basically.
