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
job
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'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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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 once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.
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I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.
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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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In your teens and twenties, death doesn't exist. In your thirties, you glance down the road occasionally. But then in your forties, it becomes a full-time job looking the other way.
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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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If you watch a group of schoolchildren eating lunch together, you cannot help but notice how it is a comically Lilliputian version of the adult thing - the cocked eyebrows of conversation, the reaching for condiments, the shovelling of food into tiny mouths.
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I love Twitter, and my little corner of it is heavily weighted in favour of women, many of them writers: Caitlin Moran, India Knight, Lauren Laverne, Grace Dent, Deborah Orr, Marina Hyde, Suzanne Moore. I look at that list of names and think, 'Here comes the fun - fun that knows its way around a dictionary.'
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I love watching the Oscars and seeing everybody saying all that 'it's an honour just to be nominated' rubbish. Then you see their faces when the split screen comes up as the winner is announced - the losers are all smiling through gritted teeth and looking as if they just swallowed half a pound of soor plooms.
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I love England. I live and work here. My children have grown up here. I see no conflict between this and praying that my countrymen in Scotland never have to live another day under Conservative rule from London.
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I love my children and care greatly for their future. If they decide they just want to loaf around for a bit between the ages of 16 and 25, that's perfectly fine by me. I did it, and I'm doing fine, thanks. Sometimes 'leaving kids to their own devices' is the best thing for them.
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I am very fortunate. I am a glass-half-full eternal optimist type to the point of being a moron. But I would never presume to know how hard it goes for others. How, for some people, just getting though the day is an incredible effort that can hardly be borne.