John Niven Quotes
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The last time I saw Dad alive, he was in the hospital. He was watching 'Hell Drivers,' a crummy B-movie about truckers, on TV and reading the 'Daily Record.' This seems scarcely believable, but I actually said, 'Dad, you've not got long to go - don't you think you should be imbibing the culture a bit more?'
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The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.
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Being on set is difficult for the writer. Your job is done, and you have to step back and hand it over to the director.
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I do often feel that the single greatest thing about my job is that I don't have a boss. I'm like an overweight Han Solo: I take orders from just one person - me.
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Among the Internet's many gains for humanity, decreasing paranoia has not been one of them. Anything from that lump under your armpit to what's lurking in the sea - just type it into a search engine and watch your nerves explode.
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I go to the Caribbean for a month every January with hand baggage only. All you need is a passport and a credit card.
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I do find the sight of small children eating very moving. Watch the way their tiny fingers clamp the cutlery. The exaggeratedly precise way they move cups or glasses to their lips.
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If pushed to say what I like about Elizabeth, who, as I'm sure most of you know, overtook Queen Victoria this week to become our longest-serving monarch, it would be her uncomplaining, getting-on-with-it ethic.
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I do shamefully little for charity, and I always talk about it when I do.
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I've never understood why the end of a relationship - especially one involving children - has to immediately signal a descent into hatred and toxicity.
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It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block.
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Don't get me wrong: there are aspects of buying music online that I love. Instantly being able to hear a song the moment it crosses your mind? Where's the downside? However, I do feel for those too young to remember the thrill of going record shopping.
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A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.
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You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers.
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I quite like the Queen. Now, this must come as a fairly amazing statement for someone who is avowedly left wing, pro-independence and anti-monarchy, but there you go.
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America has the largest nuclear capability in the world. All this power neither prevented 9/11 nor helped to avenge it. How could it? Who would America have attacked?
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I love being a writer. I have a great life. I get up in the morning and pad around in my dressing gown and listen to Radio 4.
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It wasn't until my teenage years that a book really left a mark, and that was George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' It was on the syllabus at school when I was about 16, and I went on to read more of his books. It was the height of the Cold War, so a lot of the messages really resonated at the time.
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The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'
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I'm very fond of Glasgow, particularly the West End. The whole stretch of the west coast of Scotland from Loch Lomond up through Mallaig to the Kyle of Localsh is so beautiful.
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From everything I can read about Aussie spiders, it seems like all they really like doing is hiding in your house or garden or car until you 'accidentally' disturb them - probably by doing something crazy like putting on the shoe they are lurking in - and they can officially bite you to pieces.
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I have to confess to not being a great forward planner. I'm the kind of person who regularly arranges to have dinner with five different people on the same night.
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As anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, I'm fairly robust in my views on there. I get next to nothing in the way of trolling. Most women I know who regularly come close to expressing an opinion get trolled constantly. This is a men-on-women issue. Guys are pretty much doing it to the girls.
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I grew up in a council house in a poor Scottish town. I came of age during the recession of the mid-1980s when unemployment in my area reached 40 per cent.