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"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."
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"Some people stay in the academic world just to avoid becoming self-aware. You can quote me on that."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I went across the fields to avoid the straight highways, along the firing lines where people were shooting at a small wooded hill, which is now covered with wooden crosses and lines of graves instead of spring flowers."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Saddam Hussein has been brutal against his people, but when he was committing those crimes, the international community did not come to the rescue of the Iraqis."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It's hard to build a brand, competitively, and tell people what you do as well."
Author Name
Personal Development
"There are people out there who want me to fail, who want Jude to fail, who want our relationship to fail."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The people sensible enough to give good advice are usually sensible enough to give none."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I think we're giving people something new that people didn't know was out there before."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Bankruptcy represents a longstanding commitment in this country to helping people get a fresh start. This principle has never been giving only certain people a fresh start."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not."
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Personal Development
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"Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books."
Time
"There is a kind of mysticism to writing."
Writing
"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."
Music
"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."
Time
"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."
Creativity
"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."
People
"When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it."
Time
"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."
Time
"I enjoy the freedom of the blank page."
Freedom
"Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is."
Cultural
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