I think [Ecstasy] was a really good stab. It wasn't my strongest book or my strongest material, but they wanted to make a kinda "rave culture" movie.

I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.

The first of the Trainspotting crew to die. Out of the five of them like, Begbie, Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and [Margaret] Thatcher. Who'd have thunk she'd have been the first to go? She was the invisible author of the book, really. She created the conditions and the hubris whereby that whole culture flourished.

Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.

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

We made the world uninhabitable for ourselves and it can only be inhabited by robots and androids.

It's the UK: We have to get beyond that imperialist state. I think that kind of imperialist, hierarchical, elitist state has made it easier to basically shaft everybody in the country, which it's been doing for the last thirty years. It has also sort of made it more difficult for England to fulfill its destiny, which in my mind is creating a multi-ethnic, multicultural society that is truly at the head of that post-imperial commonwealth ideal. I think that that's what England should be and that that's the kind of nation we should be.