If I don't have something to do, I'm not the kind of person who can sit on a beach on holiday. I've got to go and check things out and see things and look at things, and have some kind of itinerary in my mind. I think that a lot of people who are, in some ways, successful are kind of like that.

In some ways, you can say that at any time in any writer's career: 'He might have run out of ideas.'

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

You've got the whole stuff with transgender toilets and stuff like that - that's no way for a government to behave. We're supposed to be against ISIS, so why are we trying to slowly introduce a country-club version of Sharia law in America, you know? It doesn't make any real sense at all. I think there's going to be a lot of energy, there is already a lot of reaction against that - people are prepared to really stand up and be counted for democracy, and in the process to find out what is and what isn't.

If I stop working and publishing, and TV, and film and all that, I would be dead within a couple of weeks. I don't really have that kind of off-switch.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

I think UKIP [ UK Independence Party] and the BNP [British National Party] are very, very English concerns. If they gather strength they're going to add to this schism between Scotland and England.