Festival Quotes

I opened the Woodstock Festival even though I was supposed to be fifth. I said, 'What am I doing here? No, no, not me, not first!' I had to go on stage because there was no one else to go on first - the concert was already two-and-a-half hours late. ~ Richie Havens

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible. ~ Vanessa Redgrave

The Romans had, like other Pagan nations, a nature festival, called by them Saturnalia, and the Northern peoples had Yule; both celebrated the turn of the year from the death of winter to the life of spring - the winter solstice. As this was an auspicious change the festival was a very joyous one ... The giving of presents and the burning of candles characterized it. Among the Northern people the lighting of a huge log in the houses of the great and with appropriate ceremonies was a feature. ~ Samuel L. Jackson

On being invited to the Jaipur Festival, I was naturally nervous about attempting an opening address to such an elite gathering. ~ Amartya Sen

Because I've a track record of talking about books I never write, in Australia they think I'm about to write a book about Jane Austen. Something I said at some festival. ~ Kate Atkinson

Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter. ~ Karl Liebknecht

Here in New York, we're media obsessed. Writers write about writers who write about writers and reporters and freelancers, and it's just a festival of information. We're all analyzing and examining and predicting, and I can't imagine that it's like that everywhere else. ~ Lauren Weisberger

It took Cianfrance 12 years to bring 'Blue Valentine' to the screen after he first conceived it. He found Gosling and Williams early on, and they hung in there with him. The film finally premiered at Sundance 2010, then screened at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival before landing in theaters in December. ~ Katie Hafner

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

You'll have to forgive Sayri," Ayriah said gently.
"Her mate was killed at Gore-Fest."
"How barbaric - a festival where people are stabbed and gored?" Sarah exclaimed, truly horrified.
"No..." Ayriah answered, somewhat confused.
"Gore-Fest is a reading of the collected works of Al Gore, from the twentieth century. ~ Platte F. Clark

The really cool thing is all about being able to take your movie around and show it. It puts you in direct contact with people who are like-minded and interested in similar things. I think the film festival circuit has certainly helped to foster the community. ~ Joe Swanberg

Hope everyone will kill their inside ravan today,
For Nature,
For Animals,
For Humanity,
on this great day.

Happy dushera to everyone ~ Kuldeep Chauhan

Maybe we should stay another night," said Amelia...
Rick nodded. "You're right. Sounds good to me." He then winked at her and said with a teasing glint in his eyes, "We can both sleep in this bed to save money." He then patted the space beside him.
Amelia laughed and shook her head. "In your dreams!"
Rick chuckled. "Yeah. In my dreams is right. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

Let's go to the festival," he said. He was too thin, I thought. There were shadows under his cheekbones where flesh should have been, in a face so young. "No Ryzek. Just you and me."
I stared down at his upturned palm. He offered touch to me so freely, without realizing how rare it was. How rare he was, to a person like me.
"Why?" I said.
"What?"
"You've been nice to me recently." I furrowed my brow. "You're being nice to me now. Why? What's in it for you?"
"Growing up here really has warped you, hasn't it?"
"Growing up here," I clarified, "has made me see the truth about people."
He sighed, like he disagreed with me but didn't want to bother to argue. He sighed that way a lot. "We spend a lot of time together, Cyra. Being nice is a matter of survival."
"I'll be recognized. The currentshadows are memorable, even if my face is not."
"You won't have any currentshadows. You'll be with me." He cocked his head to the side. "Or are you really that uncomfortable with touching me?"
It was a challenge. And maybe a manipulation. ~ Veronica Roth

The first thing I wrote was a one-act play that got accepted at a one-act play festival, and I was in it along with Nathan Lane and a couple of other very good actors. ~ Aaron Sorkin

There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world. ~ Jean Baudrillard

After everything I had done for Percy Jackson, I expected delight upon my arrival. A tearful welcome, a few burnt offerings, and a small festival in my honor would not have been inappropriate. ~ Rick Riordan

I used to do a lot of serious theatre during my school and college days. Comedy was only reserved for youth festival and inter-college competitions. Then once 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge' was launched, a regional channel in Punjab started a program based on that. I participated in it and emerged as the winner. ~ Kapil Sharma

When people say 'stadium songs,' it's really negative. All the festival headliners, I've realised, are usually the worst bands. ~ Laurent Brancowitz

I think Cannes is usually pretty fair in choosing what will play well to the home festival crowd. ~ Eric Fellner

There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago. ~ Robert Redford

Hanukkah is ... the festival of lights, instead of one day of presents, we get eight crazy nights ~ Adam Sandler

13 And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses. 14 He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; He triumphed over them by Him. 16 Therefore, don't let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is the Messiah. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm and inflated without cause by his unspiritual mind. ~ Anonymous

But I really felt that, something about the lights going down, and the sense of community. I saw this movie at one festival, and there were 1700 people. ~ Paul Reiser

You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly. ~ David Byrne

A national festival is an occasion to refine and rebuild the national character. ~ Narendra Modi

Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live. ~ Afrojack

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Home"

It would take forever to get there
but I would know it anywhere:

My white horse grazing in my blossomy field.
Its soft nostrils. The petals
falling from the trees into the stream.

The festival would be about to begin
in the dusky village in the distance. The doe
frozen at the edge of the grove:

She leaps. She vanishes. My face -
She has taken it. And my name -

(Although the plaintive lark in the tall
grass continues to say and to say it.)

Yes. This is the place.
Where my shining treasure has been waiting.
Where my shadow washes itself in my fountain.

A few graves among the roses. Some moss
on those. An ancient

bell in a steeple down the road
making no sound at all
as the monk pulls and pulls on the rope. ~ Laura Kasischke

The only way I can describe the visions I witnessed with even faint approximation is in terms of other scenes which might arouse similar impressions of tortuous chaos: perhaps a festival of colors twisting in blackness, a tentacled abyss that alternately seems to glisten moistly as with some horrendous dew, then suddenly dulls into an arid glow, like bone-colored stars shining over an extra-terrestrial desert. ~ Thomas Ligotti

When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila's horses' hooves have ever scoured. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

On an average, we celebrate 4-5 festivals per month. There are the major ones like Christmas and Diwali and then there are minor ones like whatsitsname-get-drunk-and-dance-in-front-of-temple-near-bomanahalli festival. ~ Rachna Singh

At Performa in New York, there are a lot of commissions, but Manchester Festival is the only festival where everything is fully produced by the festival. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Salma Hayek

Though small, the shrine has a long history. In 1333 - the Third Year of the Genko era - Lord Takeshigé Kikuchi ascended to it in order to implore the divine favor before going into battle. Victory was his, and in gratitude he had the shrine rebuilt. According to tradition, he himself carved the Worship Image, reciting a triple prayer after each stroke. This represented the god as standing on the mountain peak with one hand raised, gazing at the armed host he had blessed. It was an image of victory.
Now, however, the morning after the rising, early on the auspicious Ninth Day of the Ninth Month, the time of the Chrysanthemum Festival, there were gathered around the shrine forty-six hunted survivors of a defeated force. Some standing, some sitting, they stared blankly about them, though the penetrating autumn chill made their wounds sting. The clear light of the rising sun cast a striped pattern as it shone down through the branches of the few old cedars that surrounded the shrine. Birds were singing. The air was fresh and clear. As for signs of last night's sanguinary combat, these were visible in the soiled and bloodstained garments, the haggard visages, and the eyes that burned like live embers.
Among the forty-six were Unshiro Ishihara, Kageki Abé, Kisou Onimaru, Juro Furuta, Tsunetaro Kobayashi, the brothers Gitaro and Gigoro Tashiro, Tateki Ura, Mitsuo Noguchi, Mikao Kashima, and Kango Hayami. Every man was silent, sunk deep in thought, looking off at the sea, ~ Yukio Mishima

I took part in a theatre festival in Massachusetts two summers after I graduated from college. Then I was in Los Angeles thinking: "I'm going to go to New York." I'd decided that I would not have a chance of a film career, so I was about to make the move. I bought a plane ticket and found a place to live in New York, packed my bags and of course the universe "told me" that I was not meant to go. Suddenly, a week before I was supposed to leave, I had three job offers and one of them was my first movie. ~ Chris Pine

The End"
It is time for me to go, mother; I am going.
When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed, I shall say, "Baby is not there!" - mother, I am going.
I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you; and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe, and kiss you and kiss you again.
In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves you will hear my whisper in your bed, and my laughter will flash with the lightning through the open window into your room.
If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night, I shall sing to you from the stars, "Sleep, mother, sleep."
On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed, and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.
I shall become a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.
When, on the great festival of puja, the neighbours' children come and play about the house, I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.
Dear auntie will come with puja-presents and will ask, "Where is our baby, sister?" Mother, you will tell her softly, "He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I saw my first gig here actually (Festival Hall in Brisbane) Duran Duran. ~ Bernard Fanning

A couple of months ago, I was down in Florida for the Food and Wine Festival. And this journalist grabbed me and said, 'How does it feel to be a TV guy? You're no longer in the restaurant business.' And I laughed. I asked him, 'How long do you think it takes me to do a season?' He said, 'Well, 200 days.' And I was like, '200 days? Try 20!' ~ Tom Colicchio

Christmas is a sacred festival. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Then when I got to Hollywood, the first musical I did was Festival in 1977. ~ Gregory Harrison

My first movie, 'Heathers,' had played at the festival, so I had a little bit of a Sundance connection, but I didn't really know about the Labs. ~ Michael Lehmann

In the days when Glastonbury was an alternative festival, it was quite interesting. Now it is the most bourgeois thing on the planet ... we'll leave the middle classes to do Glastonbury and the rest of the great unwashed will decamp to Knebworth and drink a lot of beer and have fun. ~ Bruce Dickinson

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

Is that . . . has it all been for that? The tea party, the letters, what you said at the festival . . . all of it, no more than an attempt to steal my heart so you could take it back to your queen?'
'The easiest way to steal something,' Jest murmured, 'is for it to be given willingly. ~ Marissa Meyer

I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled. ~ Wendy Liebman

Spiritually, life is a festival, a celebration. Joy is of the essence of life; ~ Agnivesh

The Vision Festival was packed every night, always has been for the four years it's been happening. ~ Joseph Jarman

In starting to learn about film festivals and what were good ones - 'cause there are five billion of them - it was just a really good East Coast festival. And I thought this little movie was an East Coast film. ~ Andrew McCarthy

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures. ~ David K. Shipler

In the spring, during the Festival of Flora, when Rome was crowded with visitors from all over Italy, Clodius's mob found itself for once outnumbered by ordinary citizens who despised their bullying tactics. Clodius himself was actually jeered at the theatre. Unused to anything other than adulation from the people, according to Atticus he looked around him in astonishment at the slow handclapping, taunts, whistles and obscene gestures, and realised - almost too late - that he was in danger of being lynched. He retreated hastily, and that was the beginning of the end of his domination, for the Senate now recognised how he could be beaten: by appealing over the heads of the ~ Robert Harris

I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo to in festival terms. ~ William Shakespeare

On a personal level, I chose not to look at the eclipse but rather sat outside during it and listened and appreciated nature, instead of participating in it like a pop festival. My decision was based partly on belief but also I have to contemplate the mass production of glasses and how they will only be used once, polluting our earth with plastics and harmful metals. ~ Lorin Morgan-Richards

I actually know the moment I became known. It was at the Cannes Film Festival, when they showed 'The Virgin Spring.' I walked into that theater as one person, and I walked out as another. ~ Max Von Sydow

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema. ~ Leslie Caron

I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman. ~ Alice Meynell

(The festival) was awfully impersonal and abstract and there was something really gloomy about it, ... That's when I first started thinking about the typical view of reality. ~ Thomas Cahill

I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.' ~ Simon McBurney

Rick smiled mischievously and said, "I think I'm going to learn 'Kisses sweeter than wine'. It's a fun one."
Amelia laughed. "What it about?"
"It's about a guy who falls in love with this girl who has kisses sweeter than wine. As you know, folk songs have a story to tell. Well, he asked her to marry him. At first she wouldn't accept his proposal, so he had to beg and plead with her."
"Why didn't she want to marry him?"
"I think she was worried about how it would change her life. She'd been on her own for quite some time and she had to get used to the idea."
Amelia bit her lip and glanced down at her lap. With curiosity, she asked, "Did she finally accept his proposal?"
"Yup. It just took her a while to realize he was the best thing that ever happened to her." Rick grinned. "She sort of reminds me of someone else I know. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque at the edge of the mangrove forest softly announces, in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by cheerful, though overamplified, kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple that reminds Less of the ice cream truck from his childhood. Then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on. There are sermons and live singers and thunderous drum performances. In this way, the faiths alternate throughout the day, as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety. After that, the jungle falls to silence. Perhaps this is the Buddhists' sole contribution. Every morning, it starts again. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole. ~ Josef Pieper

Yulin, a festival in China where thousands of dogs are slaughtered for feast.
Gadhimai Mela, a festival in Nepal where buffaloes, pigs, goats, chickens, and pigeons are slaughtered in large scale
Eid, a festival observed throughout world where animals of various categories are sacrificed.
Come to the land of gods, India, where women are slaughtered each year, each month, everyday.
STOP female foeticide! ~ Debajani Mohanty

You always know when one of the first ["Harry Potter" movies] are on TV, because you'll get a text message from one of your friends saying, "How high was your voice?" It's like watching a home movie, in some sense. But you just remember because the audience sees the scenes as they're written, but we remember shooting [the scenes] and all the stories that came around it. Like the Quidditch World Cup in ["Harry Potter and the] Goblet of Fire," it's like the Glastonbury Festival at Leavesden [Studios]. ~ James Phelps

My favourite festival experience is a show at midnight with the moon blazing and a crowd full of open hearts ready to dance. ~ Lykke Li

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas

The kids were probably setting up a prank, trying to beat the one Matt had done with his friend Cody at Sigrblot, the spring festival. The parade had arrived at the longship to find it covered in a tarp… and making honking noises. Underneath the tarp, they'd discovered a flock of geese wearing little Viking helmets. ~ M.A. Marr

The Abominable Snowman has arrived," he said to Milo. "If I'm not as clean as most abominable snowmen are, it is because I was kidnapped as a child from the slopes of Mount Everest, and taken as a slave to a bordello in Rio de Janeiro, where I have been cleaning the unspeakably filthy toilets for the past fifty years. A visitor to our whipping room there screamed in a transport of agony and ecstasy that there was to be an arts festival in Midland City. I escaped down a rope of sheets taken from a reeking hamper. I have come to Midland City to have myself acknowledged, before I die, as the great artist I believe myself to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Obviously there is stuff that I wouldn't play in a club that I play at festivals, and vice-versa, but my sets are still dominated largely by my own music. I think that's what makes me stand out a bit. My music is also festival- and club-friendly, so it generally works out well. ~ Avicii

I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It's a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up. ~ Graham Coxon

Christmas Day is the festival of optimism. ~ Helen Keller

Like the Maccabees, most people want the right to pray to God in their own way. This right is called freedom of religion. The spirit of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is shared by all people who love freedom. ~ Norma Simon

Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge. ~ Liz Jensen

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Marriage is a festival to celebrate unconditional love between two beating hearts. ~ Megha Khare

But then you meet somebody fine at the neighborhood block party, or you go out for Vietnamese perogies or some other bizarre shit that you can't get anywhere but in this dumb-ass city, or you go see an off-off-off-Broadway fringe festival that nobody else has seen, or you have a random encounter on the subway that becomes something so special and beautiful that you'll tell your grandkids about it someday. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Martin's Monsanto poem holds devastating power. I heard the first public reading at the Resurgence Festival of well-being in London. It brought truth with clarity, not least with a kind of conviction and passion that is all too rare ~ Tony Juniper

Since childhood, since her early school days, New Year's Eve had possessed for her a mournful terror: she had elected it to represent the Nothingness which was her own life, the solid, cheerful festival which had seemed to be the lives of others. ~ Margaret Drabble

We stare down at the festival below us. I can hear the low pulse of a local band playing cover songs, the rustle of in the lake nearby, and the carrying laughter of kids our age eating cotton candy and flirting with summer loves. The sun has melted down to the horizon line, leaving trails of orange and pink in it's wake. In the distance, our hotel's roof peeks over the tree line. ~ Emery Lord

I did a short film called 'Disco' and won an award for Best Supporting Actor at an indie film festival, and that was nice. Hopefully there's lots more to come. ~ Charlie Rowe

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. ~ Rhys Darby

But Aiden sprang from the pool jacked on adrenaline. He screamed and pumped his fists as if he were trying to win first prize at the "Fuck Yeah Festival. ~ Matt K. Turner

The frustrating part of it is that you're generally known for what you did last. I've had the privilege of doing some very cool independent films that, a lot of the time, the general public doesn't see unless you're at a film festival or you're into that kind of movie. ~ Hayden Panettiere

The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

I don't love playing new songs in a festival environment. Because when it comes to a festival a lot of people probably won't know your band really well at all so playing more familiar songs is a little more conducive in having a better show. ~ Jack Barakat

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! ~ Leonard Leventon

Bonnaroo has kind of become the granddaddy of all American festivals. The thing I love about it most is that it wasn't born out of picking the top ten bands off the Billboard chart and creating a festival around it. ~ Michael Franti

Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Tribeca Film Festival Doha will be both an industry festival and an audience festival, not just an event for insiders. Community outreach will be a major part of what we're doing. We'll put filmmakers in touch with local, regional, and international audiences. ~ Craig Hatkoff

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she b ~ William Shakespeare

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. ~ Pete Seeger

So, it was done, the break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.
It was John Adams, more than anyone, who had made it happen. Further, he seems to have understood more clearly than any what a momentous day it was and in the privacy of two long letters to Abigail, he poured out his feelings as did no one else:
The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more. ~ David McCullough

And what makes me happy now has changed as well ... Its one thing to play in a bar or at a biker festival, and hear a guy who's been drinking beer all day come up and tell you how good you are. For a long time in your life that will make you happy. ~ Rick Derringer

This festival ... the festival of Makar Sankranti ... is our way of showing love towards nature. While global warming poses a serious threat to the world and mankind, this message of love for our environment is extremely essential. ~ Narendra Modi

Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. The great fire of Troy from which a fugitive had escaped, taking with him his aged father, his young son, and his household goods, had passed down to us that night in this flaming festival. I thought also, with something like awe, of conflagrations to come. These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night in this flaming festival. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film. ~ Thom Powers

Celebrating a festival called life. ~ Jagbir Singh

The Banff Mountain [Book] Festival attracts this huge number of travel writers. Whereas when I go to literary festivals ... ~ John Gimlette

It's an honor for me to close out Mysteryland. In American music history this is hallowed ground. I think electronic music has a lot in common with the spirit of rock and roll and what Woodstock had going on at the time. We are kind of the new kids on the block and this music isn't accepted by everyone so we are still kind of getting into pop culture and I think its appropriate that this festival is here and kicking down the door. ~ Kaskade

Above me, billboards advertise gun shows, mobile-telephone plans and law firms that specialize in drunk-driving cases. I looked into renting a billboard recently but my application was rejected.

THE GREATEST PROSPERITY COMES TO ITS END,
DISSOLVING INTO EMPTINESS; THE MIGHTIEST
EMPIRE IS OVERTAKEN BY STUPOR AMIDST
THE FLICKER OF ITS FESTIVAL LIGHTS
-Rabindrath Tagore

it would have said.

The billboard people told me they didn't know who Rabindranath Tagore was and could not verify anything he might have thought. He was certainly foreign and his sentiments insurrectionary. As well, what he was saying wasn't advertising anything. This night I see that space I tried to claim depicts black-and-white cows painting the words EAT MORE CHICKEN on the side of a barn. ~ Joy Williams

Then I guess we cannot miss the famous festival in New Orleans," he found himself saying, just to take the shadows from her eyes.
She was silent a moment, her fingers twisting in the blanket. "Do you mean it, Gregori? We can go?"
"You know how much I love crowds of humans," he said, straight-faced.
She laughed at him. "They don't bite."
"I do," he said, the words low and soft, his silver gaze at once possessive. ~ Christine Feehan