Quotes from Irvine Welsh

I just love the weather. I live on Miami Beach, which is all boutique hotels and cocktails. I do sometimes go along to smart parties in my white suit, but I wouldn't really recognise any famous people if they were there because I'm not very good at star-spotting.

Television has become the government, priest, psychotherapist - the legitimiser of our egos.

I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it.

I've been doing a bit of screenwriting and producing, and even a bit of directing.

It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element.

When I left school at 16, I became an apprentice television and radio technician, and was paid £17 a week, which was decent money in 1976. But the job turned sour when I gave myself an electric shock while repairing a television set.

There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society.

The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.

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

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.

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

Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as I struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life

I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.

A lot of people pulled me up after 'Trainspotting' for its absence of politics, but the argument I make is that the absence of politics is political as well.

I don't perceive an audience at all when I write a book. It's pure self-indulgence.

In my flat in Chicago, I've got this big room with an office in the corner and a balcony so I can watch people go by.

I'm trying to make really flawed characters that have got redeeming features so people can say, 'I don't really like that character, but I can understand a bit where they've come from.'

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

Sometimes a book influences me because it winds me up. There'll be something that gets under my skin and makes me think that I can do better.

I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.

The celebration of death is not a good thing. Fetishizing death isn't a good thing. You should be celebrating life and enjoying it and all that.

It's where you come from that's the strange, exotic, quirky, mad place.

People either think I'm this totally savage, idiot-savant genius guy who's lucked out or they think I'm a super-manipulative crafty businessman, this kind of MBA guy who's spotted a gap in the market and knows how to create a product for it. It's flattering, but I've not got that much of a gameplan.

When you go away, you see where you come from in a different light. I see Scotland, and the rest of Britain, as much more exotic than I used to.