The first time I went to West Virginia I was surprised by how poor it was. It was like north India, there's kids running around in bare feet. The white working class has been disenfranchised as well. It's been disenfranchised by the liberal-left as well as the conservative-right. You really have to get people right across America and Britain and Europe and the world as a whole concentrating on the economic issues that affect them, because when you don't have that, you have all these phony, racist and cultural wars, and sexist wars.

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

I feel like I've exhausted guys and male friendships.

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.

The subsequent success levels, all the other stuff [after Trainspotting], it comes at a much higher level.

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

When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music.