I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.

I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up.

His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life.

War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.

You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?