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 can see why the Russians love Robert Burns, I think that Russians and Koreans have a very similar outlook to Scots.

In America I think we need to move towards a social democracy, European-style basically, and I think that in Britain we do as well.

I've always felt really good about England. I've always felt really, really good about Britain.

When you start off with your first book, people assume that you're like all the characters in the book - and it does complicate things, when you're being constantly bombarded with it, but you have to embrace it.

People are really excited by Obama abroad because he seems to be the first American presidential candidate who has ambition to go out of the country. In a sense, with the power of globalization, you are kind of electing the leader of the Western world to an extent.

Most people in the West are not politicized. They're the most simplistic consumers - they're animals, basically.