Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Bowie's death is a very emotional thing. My generation of working-class Britain, it feels like we lost our spiritual leader, our guru. I always thought that if I was to be a hundred, somehow Bowie would be a hundred and fifteen. He'd be there to still steer me and guide me.

[Margaret Thatcher] was the invisible hand behind it. Without that, there'd be no Trainspotting and no Filth.

Chicago is seen as everything that Trump detests, which I think kind of reflects really well on the city I think, because it's a mark of what a classy, cool, sort of place it is. You can't tame everyone in America, as much as these people would like to, into some kind of small-town, Southern community.

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

The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel.

I think, ironically, the media's been good for America, but Trump's been good for the media. He's revitalized The New York Times and CNN - it's never had so much integrity and so much power ever, and that's because being attacked by constant authoritarians and fascists with an agenda has actually got them to sharpen up and to get back to base principles about what the media should actually be. It's also that the circulation boost has removed this horrible, incipient commercial pressure that compromises media.