I like the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I've liked what I've experienced of Glasgow's Film Festival too.
Aidan Gillen
I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.
Alan Rickman
I sat down to try to write 'Edinburgh,' an autobiographical novel, and that took five years to write and two years to sell.
Alexander Chee
It took me a while to get back to 'The Queen of the Night.' I was angry with it as an idea because I felt like it had sort of ruined my life by taking so much attention away from 'Edinburgh.' So it essentially languished in a drawer until 2004, when I pulled it out, dusted it off, and thought, 'Oh, I actually really like this idea.'
In some ways, in 'The Queen of the Night,' I'm writing about some of the experience that I had with 'Edinburgh' where I was entirely unable to speak about what had happened to me as a child, but I could read from the novel.
Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.
Alexander McCall Smith
I try not to think about writers who came before me when I'm writing myself. If I did, given the abundance of literary talent Scotland - and Edinburgh in particular - has bestowed upon the world, I wouldn't be able to get as much as a sentence written.
Allan Guthrie
I was born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, a few days after the end of the Second World War. Both my parents had left school at a very young age, unwillingly in my father's case. Yet both had deep effects on my education, my father influencing me toward measurement and mathematics, and my mother toward writing and history.
Angus Deaton
When I was a boy living in Edinburgh in Scotland, especially in December, when the hours of daylight were few, and it was cold, and often wet, I used to dream of escaping to a tropical magic kingdom.
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
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
In 1994 I was doing a two-hander with Sean Lock in Edinburgh and there were more people in the cast than the audience. It was pretty grim, quite a chastening experience.
Bill Bailey
I spend a lot of money on the little things that make me happy, like 3 falafels from M&S to eat on the train on the way up to Edinburgh, but I do keep a close eye on the bigger picture. I don't flash the cash ridiculously on expensive things.
Bob Mortimer
Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.
Carol Ann Duffy
I went to anything that was on at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. I was quite geeky. There was a production of 'Look Back in Anger' with David Tennant and Kelly Reilly in it, and it blew me away. I still think about it and look back on it as the moment where I decided, 'I want to do that.'
Chloe Pirrie
I grew up in Edinburgh, but my dad's from Glasgow, and my mum's from Chingford in Essex, and I spent time in Ireland, too, so I was always somebody who absorbed accents. I would come back from visits, very much to the annoyance of friends and family, with an accent based on where I'd been.
Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well.
David MacKenzie
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
My first ever stage performance was in Edinburgh in 1960.
Davy Jones
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
In my career, all my most important breaks have come from Edinburgh. Winning awards, being reviewed, bagging my BBCR4 series and the chance to tour has all come from Edinburgh, which begs the question, why the hell have I left it so long to come back?
Edinburgh is the most pressurised environment to do comedy. You get an hour. There's no compere. You'd better be on the money straight away; you've got journalists in.
Edinburgh is a world city, visited throughout the year for its beauty and history, but in August, it is the City of Hope. There is something very exciting and romantic about performers of all shapes and sizes, honing their stuff for the biggest arts festival in the world.
For comics, Edinburgh makes no financial or medical sense. Get an audience; that's the first task. Once the punters are in, simply make them laugh for an hour, and then sweat on the critics.
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.
My dad's pretty funny. He's funny for all of the wrong reasons. The first time I did standup at Edinburgh he sat in the front row and wore sunglasses because he didn't want to put me off.
My Duke of Edinburgh interview for his 90th in June 2011 was not one of my successes. I knew what to expect: there were some very uncomfortable moments and put-downs, but I think it made for entertaining viewing.
I was going to do medicine at Edinburgh University - when I was three weeks old I nearly died, but they did an operation and I survived. It was a huge thing for my family - I was the first-born - and doctors were heroes, so I wanted to join them.
At seven years old, I won a scholarship to George Heriot's School, an independent school in Edinburgh, and I was there until I was 17.
My alphabet book at Duddingston Primary, Edinburgh, began traditionally with 'a is for apple,' but when it came to 'g,' it was 'g is for gas globe.' This was in the late Fifties; there hadn't been gas globes for decades. The textbook must have been 30 or 40 years old!
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.
I've spent some time in Edinburgh before. I used to go up there to busk and actually went to the Fringe a few times as a teenager with my cello.
Don't get me wrong, growing up in Edinburgh, I was all too familiar with the Hibs and Hearts rivalry. My father grew up in Leith - Hibee territory - just off of Easter Road on Albert Street.
Where I come from, everyone talks like me. It's working-class Edinburgh.
You will always worry - a wee lad from Edinburgh going up on stage in Glasgow.
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.
When it comes to his sons, it would be easy to think that the macho Duke of Edinburgh has most in common with Prince Andrew. After all, it was Andrew, his third-born son, who risked his life in the Falklands war as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot - just as Philip had risked his own as a naval officer during World War II.
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.
I left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence - laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter.
I'm not a terrifically fit person. I haven't been for any exercise. I played a bit of football, ate a couple of apples. I got a gym membership last time I was in Edinburgh but it was very hard to unsubscribe.
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.
Every year in Edinburgh, I end up waiting behind the curtain about to go on stage, and I have a moment of thinking, 'No one's told me what to do with this show. I've done exactly what I wanted. This is the biggest arts festival in the world, and all these people have shown up. Aren't I lucky?' It really is amazing.
It's awkward going back up to Edinburgh to see my old friends, because I'm not on the same wavelength.
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.
I was twelve when I went to boarding school in Edinburgh.
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.
I find Edinburgh a stimulating place in which to live, with it being a city of contrasts, both architecturally and socially, and each district having a definite character.
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.
I try and avoid the big comics in Edinburgh. You can see them on tour. Edinburgh is all about seeing the smaller comedians.
I've been fortunate enough to travel to Edinburgh a few times over the last few years, and I just loved the city. I find it one of the more beautiful cities in Europe.
