I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.
I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
Everything in the street today seems soft focus.
His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.
I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.
I'm working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together.
Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.
I grew up in what was not so much a familyas a genetic disaster.
Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know.
The first job of a writer is to be honest.
I'm always watching people over a short time frame, putting them in an extreme position. Sometimes you don't see the humanity in a person because the time frame is so short and the circumstance so extreme.
You can't lie to your soul.
It was the books I started reading. It was the music I started listening to. It was the television I started watching. I found myself thinking again. I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn't. Wen all this is in your head it has to come out into your life. If it doesn't, you get crushed. I'm not going to get crushed.
Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.
I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.
I'm not running away, I'm moving on.
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.
I'd always done a lot of sniffing glue as a kid. I was very interested in glue, and then I went to lager and speed, and I drifted into heroin because as a kid growing up everybody told me, 'don't smoke marijuana, it will kill you'.
I'm more of a warrior than you'll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie.
don't let jesus in. AA is just one obsession replaced with another
Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them.
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.
By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.
Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.
There's nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved.
It's all okay, it's all beautiful; but ah fear that this internal sea is gaunnae subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in ma body.
Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.
How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?
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.
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.
When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.
Choose life " I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
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.
It wis like auld times, but in a sense that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed.
Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.
Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.
You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.
Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done.
Love does not exist, it's like religion, the state wants you to believe in that kind of crap so they can control you, and f**k your head up.
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.