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
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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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Whenever someone like a plumber or a mechanic tries to explain something technical to me, I listen for about three seconds before it all just becomes white noise, like Charlie Brown's teacher.
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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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Like measles, the reading bug is best caught when you are young.
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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.
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I returned from my last L.A. visit to find myself tipping the scales like Homer Simpson when he tries to gain enough weight to qualify as disabled to be allowed to work from home. All I was missing was his kaftan and Fat Guy Hat. So, I decided it was time to diet.
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You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To state the obvious, as an atheist, the hymn sheet is no use to me. So I just stand there, looking straight ahead or up at the ceiling, and do nothing.
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When I was a boy during Thatcher, you watched elections and wept in disbelief as the whole country turned blue, Scotland turned red, and we still got the Tories.
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It has always been more expensive for the poor to borrow money. We see this in everything from mortgage rates to credit cards.
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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.