John Niven
John Niven
John Niven is a Scottish author and screenwriter. His books include Kill Your Friends, The Amateurs, and The Second Coming...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionAuthor
america capability largest neither nor power
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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There were some summers when every boy in Ayrshire seemed to be playing golf, and my dad taught me. But he was a terrible teacher - of everything. Learning to drive with him almost killed me. He was the world's most impatient man - awful short fuse.
anyone close expressing fairly follows guys next regularly robust twitter views women
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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As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be.
art blueprint fully means open pick screenplay script universe until work
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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A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.
children cost fear psychic
There is a psychic cost children bear when they grow up in fear.
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There are precedents for what happens when societies allow the divide between rich and poor to get so huge that it stops being funny and starts becoming a sick, blood-boiling joke. If you had a Tardis, you could go back to 1917 and ask the Russian royal family how it was all going.
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There are some sentences you cannot see yourself ever writing. 'I heartily endorse the Conservative Party' would be one. 'I look forward to Justin Bieber's new record' would be another.
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I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium.
allowed bit drink organised writer
In the end, being the writer on set is a bit like having organised a big party, but you're not allowed to eat or drink anything. You just have to stand in the corner.
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I remembered being young in the late '70s and early '80s and growing up at the height of the Cold War. I remembered how scared I was of nuclear weapons, how often I though about them and about the possibility of everything and everyone I knew vanishing in a second in temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun.
belt both life manage relationships resulting
I'm something of a black belt at break-ups. I have had two long-term relationships in my life, both of 10 years, both resulting in children, and both very much over. Things end. It is how you manage them being over that's key.
known maximum rag turn
It has long been known that if you want to see me turn into a raging, snarling beast, then all you have to do is use any combination of the words 'chill out,' 'chilling,' or - my maximum red rag - 'chillax.'