Top 100 Edinburgh's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Oh, it's you that owns that ghastly car, is it?
Prince Philip
#3. Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.
Sara Sheridan
#4. If you're not keen on crowds, it might be best to give Edinburgh a miss during festival time when it can get extremely busy.
Dexter Fletcher
#5. I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.
Shirley Manson
#6. Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.
Ann Cleeves
#7. 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
#8. I have got the best of both worlds; growing up in Edinburgh and now living outside Glasgow.
Magnus Magnusson
#9. 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
#10. It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.
Ian Rankin
#11. Edinburgh suited Ann; she liked the tall, dignified buildings of grey stone, the short days that sank into street-lamped evenings at five o'clock, and the dual personality of the city's main street, which on one side had glittering shops and on the other the green sweep of Princes Street Gardens.
Maggie O'Farrell
#12. If London was an alien city, Edinburgh was another planet
Jess Walter
#13. You can't have been here long, you haven't got a pot belly.
Prince Philip
#14. 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
#15. Edinburgh has history the way cats have bad breath.
Charles Stross
#16. If I had to pick two words to describe Edinburgh, I would tell you that it's majestic and beautiful. Really, really old, but somehow more alive than any other place I've ever been.
L. H. Cosway
#17. Following Big Boss Lady's dictate to write about offbeat places in Edinburgh - I found Arkangel and Felon, an eclectic clothing boutique, the Voodoo Rooms, a chic fringe bar with a burlesque show, and Angels with Bagpipes, a bijou wine bar on the Royal Mile.
Leah Marie Brown
#18. 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
#19. If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.
Prince Philip
#20. 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
#21. 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
#23. Even toward the middle of the century, there were occasions when the London mailbag for Edinburgh was found to contain only a single letter.
Bernard Bailyn
#24. If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.
Prince Philip
#25. When writing about Edinburgh, I place my characters in the parts of the city that I myself have lived in, or else know well, those being the Southside, Marchmont in particular, where I lived as a student, and the New Town/Stockbridge area where I live now and have done for the past 30 years.
Joan Lingard
#26. 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
#28. Just over one month from publication. The launch was really exciting and everyone had a lovely time. Thank you very much Blackwell's of Edinburgh for hosting the event.
Mary Bale
#29. 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
#30. Skyline reveals a city's purpose and character. Oxford had its dreaming spires; Manhattan its glittering towers; Edinburgh its eccentric spikes.
Alexander McCall Smith
#31. Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.
Carol Ann Duffy
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. If you happen to be a person who does not enjoy your own company, a visit to Edinburgh in January will teach you how it's done.
Vivian Swift
#35. 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
#36. Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around.
Rupert Friend
#37. I love coming back to Edinburgh. It's nice to spend real time here.
Sophie Wu
#38. The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary - grey, cracked and old,
but more importantly, trodden upon.
Martin Hopkins
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. At the art college in Edinburgh someone arranged for some London groups to come up and play. I was in a supporting band, with Bernie Green I think. Derek Bailey was one of the visiting musicians. He seemed to like my playing and asked me to come down to London.
Jamie Muir
#43. Robert Rotenberg does for Toronto what Ian Rankin does for Edinburgh.
Jeffery Deaver
#44. Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend them to your will and all worldly pleasures will be yours ...
Martin Hopkins
#45. Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef really what you want?
Alexander McCall Smith
#47. I am reading Ian Rankins book Doors Open and am enjoying his dark Edinburgh narrative will rate soon once I have read it. I am also a fan of Jane Austen and have visited her Museum House in Chawton, Hampshire every year for the last three years. My Favourite book is Sense and Sensibility.
Ian Rankin
#48. 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
#50. 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
#51. When I do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I always go across to Loch Ness and stay there.
Rhys Darby
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. Live now, live today don't be bound by rules, live your own dream.
Shahrukh Khan
#55. My mum always said you get more fun at a Glasgow stabbing than an Edinburgh wedding.
Caro Ramsay
#56. I like the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I've liked what I've experienced of Glasgow's Film Festival too.
Aidan Gillen
#57. Glasgow is less polite than Edinburgh but that's a good thing - they keep it very real.
Nik Kershaw
#58. This 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
#59. My mother was a product of World War II. My grandfather was on leave in Edinburgh when he met my grandmother.
Martin Henderson
#60. If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?
Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh
#61. 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
#62. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into disputation, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh.
Benjamin Franklin
#63. An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below.
James Hogg
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. Pipers at the Edinburgh contest were using two-droned pipes up until 1821, when such pipes were forbidden, because they allegedly gave an unfair advantage over other competitors playing the three-droned pipe.
Alistair Campsie
#67. I was a member of Corstorphine Library in Edinburgh, and every Friday night, my parents took me there to borrow books. I also used to spend nearly all my pocket money on books.
Philip Kerr
#68. When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
Norman MacCaig
#69. Nothing is 'wrong' with me, Dan. What's wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.
Martin Hopkins
#70. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Sara Sheridan
#72. My first ever stage performance was in Edinburgh in 1960.
Davy Jones
#73. I feel at home in Scotland and go back whenever I can. I've played the Edinburgh Festival twice, and I get the train across the Forth Bridge to Lochgelly, just to see it.
Kenneth Cranham
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#78. 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
#79. The Russian action in Chechnya could be likened to the British Army reducing Edinburgh to rubble and expelling a couple of million Scottish people in response to a unilateral declaration of independence by Scotland
Amjad M. Jaimoukha
#80. He exhales hard and looks at me. "I run an organization back in Edinburgh," he explains. "I rescue dogs, pit bulls and other bully breeds, but I won't turn down a stray,
Karina Halle
#81. I love Scotland. Edinburgh is a beautiful city and has a wonderful tradition of supporting the arts.
Peter Hambleton
#82. 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
#83. Lily, listen to me," he said and gave her a little shake. "This wasna a ruse, I spent the time with you in Edinburgh because I could no longer deny the fact that I craved you as I do the air in my lungs.
Donna Grant
#84. Studies have found that creative people have an especially high tolerance for ambiguity. I suspect this holds true for places of genius as well. Cities such as Athens and Florence and Edinburgh created atmospheres that accepted, and even celebrated, ambiguity.
Eric Weiner
#85. In no particular order: baked goods, Colin Farrell's eyebrows, and the thighs of rugby players everywhere. And to the city of Edinburgh, where a love story was born.
L. H. Cosway
#87. Edinburgh is an experience
A city of enormous gifts
Whose streets sing of history
Whose cobbles tell tales.
Alan Bold
#88. Conchpore is real. It is as real as Malgudi, Brahmpur, Lilliput or Macondo. And also as real as San Francisco, Madurai, Edinburgh, Gaborone or Tokyo. You know that fictional towns exist. You visit them all the time.
Indu Muralidharan
#90. When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.
Mark Billingham
#91. 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
#93. She felt something missing in her soul. It wasn't until she landed in Edinburgh that she realized that missing piece was the wild, mystical land.
Donna Grant
#94. This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect.
Alexander McCall Smith
#95. 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
#96. The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.
Charles Darwin
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. There's no leaving Edinburgh, No shifting it around: it stays with you, always.
Alan Bold
#100. 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
