I think UKIP [ UK Independence Party] and the BNP [British National Party] are very, very English concerns. If they gather strength they're going to add to this schism between Scotland and England.

Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

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.

In some ways, you can say that at any time in any writer's career: 'He might have run out of ideas.'

Choose life … I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.

Rents once sais, thirs nothin like a darker skin tone tae increase the vigilance ay the police n the magistrates: too right.