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

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.'

Alexander Chee

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.

Alexander Chee

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.

Angus Deaton

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.

Chloe Pirrie

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