I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.

I'd always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn't getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel.

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.

Most middle-class people I know don't really live like me. Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.

The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.

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.

If you have no drugs, then you have revolution, and then drugs will be the only thing stopping that.