Edinburgh quotes:

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Edinburgh used to be a haughty city. -- Alexander McCall Smith
Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around. -- Rupert Friend
Glasgow is less polite than Edinburgh but that's a good thing - they keep it very real. -- Nik Kershaw
When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous. -- Norman MacCaig
When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous. -- Paul Merton
This possibility bothered me as I thought it was not advisable to remain in one academic environment, and the long dark winters in Edinburgh could be rather dismal. -- Paul Nurse
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. -- Irvine Welsh
It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. -- Douglas Alexander
I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals. -- Gerard Butler
This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles. -- David Nicholls
When I was deputy chairman I could travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh without leaving Tory land. In a two-week period I covered every constituency in which we had an MP. There were 14. Now we have only one. We appear to have given up. -- Jeffrey Archer
My first ever stage performance was in Edinburgh in 1960. -- Davy Jones
I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education, -- Rory Bremner
I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home. -- Alan Rickman
The Duke of Edinburgh has perfected the art of saying hello and goodbye in the same handshake. -- Jennie Bond
I like the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I've liked what I've experienced of Glasgow's Film Festival too. -- Aidan Gillen
Edinburgh is an experience A city of enormous gifts Whose streets sing of history Whose cobbles tell tales. -- Alan Bold
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry. -- Charles Darwin
For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like. -- Muriel Spark
[Edinburgh] is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again. -- Alexander McCall Smith
I'm a bit of a Scotophile. I have a house on the Black Isle, so I'm in Scotland quite a lot and think Edinburgh is just the most beautiful city. -- Penelope Keith
Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe. -- Sara Sheridan
My first ideas of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) arose with my Ph.D. in Edinburgh University in the early 1950s. Supervised by Alan Beatty, my research was based on his work on altering chromosomal complements in mouse embryos. -- Robert Edwards
Even though one of them is about an Edinburgh junkie and ones a little boy of eight in Manchester, you want them to always portray their world in such a vivid way that the audience can disappear inside the story. -- Danny Boyle
I am proud of Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, but where is it on the index of global financial centres? Sixty-fourth. Below Hamilton, Casablanca and Mauritius. London, by contrast, is second only to New York. That's a link worth keeping. -- Rory Bremner
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans. -- Mark Twain
I do get recognized, but I must say Edinburgh is a fantastic city to live if you're well-known. There is an innate respect for privacy in Edinburgh people, and I also think they're used to seeing me walking around, so I don't think I'm a very big deal. -- J. K. Rowling
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In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism. -- Paul Merton
I did a production of 'Journey's End,' an RC Sherriff play about World War I, at the Edinburgh Festival. I was 18 and it was the first time that people I knew and loved and respected came up to me after the show and said, 'You know, you could really do this if you wanted to.' -- Tom Hiddleston
Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist. -- Sara Sheridan
I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education. -- Rory Bremner
Robert Rotenberg does for Toronto what Ian Rankin does for Edinburgh. -- Jeffery Deaver
It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very. -- Ian Rankin
I love coming back to Edinburgh. It's nice to spend real time here. -- Sophie Wu
There's no leaving Edinburgh, No shifting it around: it stays with you, always. -- Alan Bold
Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries. -- Carol Ann Duffy
When I do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I always go across to Loch Ness and stay there. -- Rhys Darby
I have got the best of both worlds; growing up in Edinburgh and now living outside Glasgow. -- Magnus Magnusson
I love Scotland. Edinburgh is a beautiful city and has a wonderful tradition of supporting the arts. -- Peter Hambleton
I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. -- Shirley Manson
After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine... -- Frederic Chopin
I'd done an Edinburgh show before, in 1981, called 'The Importance of Being Varnished' - I was in the pun trade at the time. -- Rory Bremner
Edinburgh is my adopted home. It's a place where I wanted to come and live, and I managed to arrange my life so it happened. -- Peter Higgs
A madhouse of frenzied moneymaking and frenzied pleasure-seeking, with none of the corners chipped off. It is beautifully situatedand the air reminds one curiously of Edinburgh. -- Aleister Crowley
I never realised that the Edinburgh skyline was so interesting - it's gothic and very urban and there's a lot of church spires and old brownstone buildings. -- Jamie Bell
I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. -- Ian Mckellen
I had a complicated life until I was 25. I was born in Bristol and was brought up by my mum and my stepfather in Edinburgh. He introduced me to books. -- Neil Cross
In Edinburgh, there was a lovely little Episcopalian Church of Scotland church on my way to the theater, so I used to pop in there and soak up the atmosphere. -- Neve McIntosh
My career has been a slow burn, so waiting to do the Edinburgh Festival was a smart move. If I'd spent a month there 10-15 years ago, there's no way anyone was gonna remember me. -- Bill Burr
My upbringing has always been quite equal in terms of cultural influences. But it's unlikely that anything could prepare you for a job that involves belting out Proclaimers songs on camera, in Edinburgh and in public. -- Antonia Thomas
I joined the after-school club, School of Comedy, which progressed wildly, and in quite a Hollywood way. It sounds like 'School of Rock', right up to trying to raise money to pay for a venue in Edinburgh. -- Will Poulter
I no longer hated the whining, menacing dragonfly we rode in, but admired its grace as we surged towards the clouds, the lights of Edinburgh twinkling below us like the starry constellations of a world upside down. -- Rosie Pugh
The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter. -- Thomas Jefferson
I used to have a lovely wallet with lots of different compartments where I kept photographs of my grandmother, grandfather and friends. It was stolen one night when I was out in Edinburgh, and I never got it back. -- Neve McIntosh
According to the Captain of The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, striking your opponent or caddie at St Andrews, Hoylake or Westward Ho! meant that you lost the hole, except on medal days when it counted as a rub of the green. -- Herbert Wind
I'm hugely fond of Scotland. My daughter, Jemma, was born in the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh, and it always tickled me that she was so vexed she didn't have a Scottish accent even though she was brought up down south. -- Rick Wakeman
During my second year at Edinburgh [1826-27] I attended Jameson's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredible dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology. -- Charles Darwin
Ian Rankin's Rebus is the king of modern British crime fiction. He is dour, determined, and constantly falls foul of his seniors. For all this, we root for him. He is eminently loveable, a quixotic hero moving through the darker half of a Jekyll and Hyde Edinburgh. -- Mark Billingham
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Many people have heard the remarkable example of devotion involving a Skye terrier dog who worked for a Scottish shepherd named Old Jock. In 1858, the day after Jock was buried (with almost nobody present to mourn him except his shaggy dog) in the churchyard at Greyfriars Abbey in Edinburgh, Bobby was found sleeping on his master's grave, where he continued to sleep every night for fourteen years. -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
At 17 years old, STG took me under its wing and shared its resources and wisdom with me, even allowing me to take part in a show at the Edinburgh Festival. Without STG and the Ramshorn Theatre, I would not have found access to the world of drama that I later made my profession. -- Peter Capaldi
I used to say Edinburgh was a beautiful actress with no talent. I thought it was just like a shortbread tin. I think that's because I did six Festivals in a row there, and I never saw the real Edinburgh, just a lot of deeply annoying Cambridge Footlights kids wanting to be actresses. -- Michelle Gomez
I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. -- Thomas Friedman
I've spent a lot of very happy times in Edinburgh as a result of playing virtually every festival since 1996. It's also a beautiful city in its own right, is walkable, within sight of the sea and mountains - and was too far north for the Luftwaffe to have done any damage, hence the spectacularly beautiful architecture. -- Marcus Brigstocke
My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. -- Sara Sheridan

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