Politicians are so... detested; they don't actually walk amongst people now.

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.

The cultural war of words has actually been won by the most dispossessed people in the Western world, the urban American blacks.

It's very hard to transgress; we have the furniture of transgression without the imagery and iconography to actually do it.

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.

We've become used to processing images that are part of the non-linear narrative theory. I think there's a thinner line between fantasy and normality. People spend much more time in their own heads now. There's so much to conform to, so many influences coming at you.