Edinburgh Quotes

For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.

It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.

When I do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I always go across to Loch Ness and stay there.

Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.

If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.

The Duke of Edinburgh has perfected the art of saying hello and goodbye in the same handshake.

The bastards murdered half my family.

I would like to go to Russia very much — although the bastards murdered half my family.

You look like you're ready for bed!

So far Kat has been through all the Wa's she could think of, but Hale hadn't admitted to being Walter or Ward or Washington. He'd firmly denied both Warren and Waverly. Watson had prompted him to do a very bad Sherlock Holmes impersonation throughout a good portion of a train ride to Edinburgh, Scotland. And Wayne seemed so wrong she hadn't even tried. Hale was Hale. And not knowing what the W's stood for had become a constant reminder to Kat that, in life, there are some things that can be given but never stolen. Of course, that didn't stop her from trying.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

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.

A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the cause of philosophy.

I'd always had an interest in guitar from about seven years old. But I first actually had lessons when I was about fifteen in Scotland, in Edinburgh. There was a folk club there and a girl called Jill Doyle taught me the guitar, who happened to be Davey Graham's sister. Davey Graham is one of my heroes and always has been. Fantastic guitar player. And he's had a strong influence on me all the way through.

Do you still throw spears at each other?

Oh, it's you that owns that ghastly car, is it?

If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.

You're not wearing mink knickers,are you?

Aren't most of you descended from pirates?

A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone's working too much. Now everybody's got more leisure time they're complaining they're unemployed. People don't seem to make up their minds what they want.

We go into the red next year... I shall have to give up polo.

There's a lot of your family in tonight.

You managed not to get eaten then?

Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf.

I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.

I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.

The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.

People say after a fire it's water damage that's the worst. We're still drying out Windsor Castle.

When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous.

As with the bud, so with the blossom. A boy is the only thing known from which a man can be made. I hope that we as parents are teaching our children that they are the sons and daughters of God, and that they have the capacity to become like him. It was the old Edinburgh weaver who prayed, 'O God, help me to hold a high opinion of myself.' Likewise I would counsel young people to hold a high opinion of themselves, to remember who they really are, and to put their faith in their Heavenly Father.

Buy products of genuine lasting value from brands that take their manufacturing seriously. I have things that are 75 years old, like the dinner suit of my grandfather's that was made in 1933 by a tailor in Edinburgh. Clothes develop stories. You can remember where you've been through clothing that you've worn. I want products that are going to endure. I hate that we buy things that are disposable. We need to buy products with integrity.

Don't let your fears become boxes that enclose you. Open them out, feel them and turn them into the greatest courage you are capable of. I promise you, nothing will go wrong. But if you live by your fears, everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong and you won't even have done the 'Funky Chicken'.

Study hard. Work hard. Play harder. Don't be bound by rules, don't hurt anybody and never ever live somebody else's dream.

Live now, live today - don't be bound by rules, live your own dream.

After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine.

I have an older brother and an older sister - and they had the time of their lives at university. They were at Newcastle and Edinburgh. Looking up to them the whole time, I wanted to go to university and live the life they were living, having a blast, and I didn't get in. I didn't get into any of the universities I wanted to go to.

I once waited on Sean Connery. A long time ago. This was at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh. They closed down the restaurant for him, and when he walked in with his morning paper, all the waitresses started squealing. He was a big guy, bigger than in the movies.

You can't have been here long, you haven't got a pot belly.

Don't become a philosopher before you become rich.

Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around.

When I come to a new city is I combine: I say, well, it's like Barcelona and Edinburgh, though I can't imagine what that would be. But Toronto, the last few times I've been here, what always comes up is Chicago and West Berlin. It's a big, sprawling city beside a lake, of a certain age and a certain architectural complexity. But the high-end retail core looks more like West Germany than the Magnificent Mile. Yonge Street is like K-Damm. There's an excess of surface marble and bronze: it's Germanic and as pretentious as pretentious can be.

If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?

I was an adult and I was in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I was performing in this cave - they used to bury the plague victims in these caves underneath the streets of Edinburgh, when I got this weird cold sensation up my spine, it gave me this really weird feeling, and then I looked up and there was this white, sudden white shape, that just zapped from me and went straight to the light that was at the back of the room, and I just stopped cold and said to the audience, "Did you guys see that?" No one saw it.

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.

Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?

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.

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.

I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book hopefully adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation's politics, economy, psyche and history ... and perhaps pointing towards its possible future.

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.

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.