Top 100 Festival Quotes
#1. 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
#2. The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#3. 'Obvious Child,' the short, had a nice life online and a great festival run, but the short and the feature still stand apart from everything else I've done. I play a woman who you might meet in life. My other work is much more heightened.
Jenny Slate
#4. Then solar systems, galaxies, supernovas, infinite space itself will become elements of a final masterwork
a never-ending festival, a celestial amusement park in which every exploding star and spinning electron is part of the empyreal choreography.
Steven Millhauser
#5. It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience.
Jesse Eisenberg
#6. I love the outdoor festival feeling. When I'm on stage, it's very gratifying to watch people on the lawns enjoying the music with a glass of wine.
Joshua Bell
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. I have about four different endeavors I'm going after right now. They all excite me in different ways. I'm all about keeping as many irons in the fire as possible. I'm writing music, trying to write a book (aren't we all?), putting a festival together, speaking ... It keeps life interesting.
Kevin Griffin
#10. Awesome. Seth Walters was one of my very favorite people on the planet. It always gave me the warm fuzzies when he was around, and based on Mr. Shaw's expression, I wasn't the only one who thought he was only slightly less nasty than a port-a-potty at a Burning Man festival.
April White
#11. 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
#12. It was 1988, I believe, that I met Grit. We were both appearing in a Canadian Folk Festival and as we sat backstage he handed me his guitar. I played it, loved it, and then found out that he'd made it himself.
Tom Chapin
#13. The Rock'n'Blues Fest is my kind of festival series! It's always great playing shows with my brother and, add to that, all the other great artists and their bands and this should make for one historic round of concerts.
Johnny Winter
#14. 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
#15. To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - the first Festival evening prayer and blessing.
Sholom Aleichem
#16. Sin met Mae and Alan coming into the flat.
Mae frowned. "Is it no-shirts festival day?"
"Every day with Nick is no-shirts festival day," Alan said absently, but he was frowning too.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#17. When I graduated from Brown after majoring in women's studies, I made my first PBS documentary, 'Women of Substance.' My first feature documentary was called 'American Hollow,' which I did for HBO and was at the Sundance Film Festival.
Rory Kennedy
#18. There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
Jean Baudrillard
#19. The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind. The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.
Laozi
#21. You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.
Rabindranath Tagore
#22. 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
#23. Selfridges' Christmas hot list includes faux fur animal hats by Merrimaking, currently enjoying a cult status in Japan and amongst festival goers.
Geraldine James
#24. 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
#25. I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.
Ethan Hawke
#26. The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn't trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.
Ethan Hawke
#27. And then after the success at Melbourne Comedy Festival, then we regrouped back in LA and we went back into workshopping and decided to develop a proper show and that's when we started working on "Stuffed and Unstrung," which is a much bigger and sharper version of "Puppet Up."
Brian Henson
#28. What I find fascinating about Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights we celebrate at this time of the year, is the way its story was transformed by time.
Jonathan Sacks
#29. The adorably rubber-faced Ken James Stewart is jumping ship from the Shaw Festival after five years to play Charlie Brown
Richard Ouzounian
#30. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.
Harry Reid
#31. Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel.
Olivier Dahan
#32. The Vision Festival was packed every night, always has been for the four years it's been happening.
Joseph Jarman
#33. 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
#34. Were not a festival band, playing during the day was something we had to get over, I was like uhh this sun stuff kind of sucks
Gerard Way
#35. It probably wasn't until Nine Inch Nails played the first Lollapalooza that I actually went to a festival.
Trent Reznor
#36. Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
Graham Greene
#37. I dug up some old John Buscema 'Conan' comics. Man, when Alfredo Alcala was inking, that was some of the most beautiful black and white comic art ever published. The stories are good, too, though early '70s comics based on Conan is a festival of sexist, racist stereotypes.
Ted Naifeh
#38. 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
#39. 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
#41. You can't host an Italian film festival without Marcello Mastroianni. It just doesn't feel right.
Gia Coppola
#42. Your palms break sweat and you sit there, needy, while your work ethic and character are available for comment from strangers you wouldn't share a joint with at a blues festival.
Daniel Woodrell
#43. The Truth Is That Existence Wants Your Life To Become A Festival Because When You Are Unhappy, You Also Throw Unhappiness All Around.
Osho
#44. Before I went on stage at Kyle Hutton's Real Life Real Music Festival, I heard one of his songwriting students, Abbey Hirvela, sing; she was in the poet's saddle and riding that horse like she owned it. She was good! I probably ruined her by showing her how to make an E chord without the 3rd though.
Ray Wylie Hubbard
#45. I think Ross Noble is the only person that I've seen really storm a stand-up slot at a festival, and that was when he led 3,000 people on a conga out of the tent and across the entire site to a vegetarian food truck.
Marcus Brigstocke
#46. If we get a few solid festival shows then I will have no problem booking the lads for as many quality club shows around them to make a nice tour come together.
Pat Garrett
#47. For a writer, the Book Festival is interesting because you bump into all these other writers whose work you know, whose names you know, and you have a chance to put a person with the name and the work.
Steve Erickson
#48. Full Frame is where I had the first showing of my first film, 'Street Fight.' I have a fond memory of pacing around outside the theater, nervously trying to keep from throwing up. It's a magical festival, well curated, with a warm and generous spirit.
Marshall Curry
#49. Luke mentioned that a lot of people go to the Kumbh Mela festival to 'find themselves'. That's a saying I've never understood. If I did want to find myself, I don't think I'd find me at a festival with 20 million other people. I hate crowds. The
Karl Pilkington
#50. The Banff Mountain [Book] Festival attracts this huge number of travel writers. Whereas when I go to literary festivals ...
John Gimlette
#51. Nowhere is the English genius of domesticity more notably evident than in the festival of afternoon tea. The [ ... ] chink of cups and the saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.
George Gissing
#52. 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
#53. When I started out, I wanted to be the kind of artist who could play the CMA Music Festival and then turn around and play Bonnaroo, and I've managed to do both.
Kacey Musgraves
#54. I met Prince William at a musical festival and he let me know he was a fan of my music. But the invitation to sing at his wedding reception came completely out of the blue. The fact that Kate and William knew the words to my songs was very touching.
Ellie Goulding
#55. 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
#56. In fact, since no one's been interested in my work, I took the responsibility recently to invest in my own work, so I'm producing a concert that was done at the Vision Festival in May.
Joseph Jarman
#57. When I do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I always go across to Loch Ness and stay there.
Rhys Darby
#58. When I was seven, I wanted to be Esther Williams. I was drummed out of Brownies because I snuck off to the cinema to watch an Esther Williams festival - my greatest wish if I get to Hollywood is to meet her.
Jacki Weaver
#59. 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
#60. It was early spring, 326 BC, in the beautiful city of Chersonesus protected by a haunting deep blue sea and a giant wall. Today was the second day of the Festival of Dionysus.
Destin Bays
#61. Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.
Henry Rollins
#62. One has just to be oneself. That's my basic message. The moment you accept yourself as you are, all burdens, all mountainous burdens, simply disappear. Then life is a sheer joy, a festival of lights.
Rajneesh
#63. People see musicians on a huge stage playing a festival for 80,000 people and are like, "Oh, they have such magnetism," but it always embarrasses me more than it makes me feel proud.
Geoff Rickly
#64. You know, Equal Interest played at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival Awards and not one musician from that category was even thought of. Even thought of! The idea, that here's this vital energy, and that element doesn't even know it exists!
Joseph Jarman
#65. Our own poor poets, I am afraid, have been so intimidated by our clinics and laboratories that they have abandoned the first principles of beginning, that of the festival; and the heart of the festival has always been the atmosphere of myth, of delight.
Joseph Campbell
#66. A whole new life at fifty, all because I had become entranced with both the Turkish culture and with Kazim - who one friend called a careening festival of a human being and another called an alcoholic Kurdish carpet salesman. I called him a catalyst.
Irfan Orga
#67. Woodstock was the antithesis of what the music industry turned into. And if anyone tries to tie another Woodstock festival to an obnoxious sponsor, I'll be out protesting again.
Michael Wadleigh
#68. I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn't pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.
Jason Reitman
#69. The biggest difference for me is that the tales really have no logical outlet, no particular infrastructure in which to present them as you would have with a film festival. There's no IMDb for audio dramas. So there's a lot of work with no particular reward.
Larry Fessenden
#70. Formally, I did my studies in the sciences, but I was very conscious that I was being deprived of culture. While studying neuroscience, I was running a rock-music festival and was able to use that as a platform to explore what it takes to produce art for 20,000 inebriated 20-somethings.
Natalie Jeremijenko
#71. I saw my first gig here actually (Festival Hall in Brisbane) Duran Duran.
Bernard Fanning
#72. I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.
Lenny Abrahamson
#73. The economic picture in the States today doesn't allow for jazz concerts in a tour fashion. People now are too used to the Festival, which gives them more names for the same price.
Norman Granz
#74. If you concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens ... Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now.
Paulo Coelho
#75. I was involved with my theater program in high school, and I was involved in a festival where I could audition for a lot of different schools.
Josh Dallas
#76. Don't let your life become a shopping festival, where people come, stays a while, explore around and blend in somewhere else. It's your life, not a Flipkart Sale.
Sarvesh Jain
#77. 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
#78. Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.
Steve Martin
#79. I did 'Othello' at the Oregon Shakes - I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two and a half years. That's where my training is.
James Avery
#80. I organize a chess festival in Hungary. I support chess in schools, and I have my own chess foundation. And I started writing books.
Garry Kasparov
#81. My mom helped me get started when I was younger. I started with singing. An agent saw me singing on stage at the Palm Springs Festival, and recommended I get into acting, so I was like, 'Oh, okay.' I just started from there, singing and acting.
Vanessa Morgan
#82. We have to change this whole earth into a tremendous festival, and it is possible because man brings all that is needed to transform this earth into a paradise.
Rajneesh
#83. I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.
Jim Shepard
#84. The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.
William Golding
#85. As the sun rose slowly above the eastern horizon, the caps of the great mountains lit up one after the other, like lamps at a festival, until they were all ruddy and glowing.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#86. Spiritually, life is a festival, a celebration. Joy is of the essence of life;
Agnivesh
#87. 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
#88. There have been a lot of people involved in the growth of EDM's support in the U.S., from DJ/producers like David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Skrillex, to major festival organisers and pop artists of EDM integrating elements of dance music into their music.
Tiesto
#89. When I first saw The Black Kat Boppers I was sat on a hill at a festival and could hear this music in a tent that literally grabbed me by the lapels and dragged me in
Paul Simonon
#90. Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperm trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.
Bjork
#91. 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
#92. In the house of God there is never ending festival; the angel choir makes eternal holiday; the presence of God's face gives joy that never fails.
Saint Augustine
#93. Festival of the impassioned efforts and manifold ambitions of all forms of youthful activity of every generation springing from the threshold of life.
Pierre De Coubertin
#94. There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy. Upon those chairs in disarray, among those flowers which are withering, under those extinguished lights, there have been thoughts of joy.
Victor Hugo
#95. 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
#96. I remember, after graduating high school, I got a part in a play with the Washington Shakespeare Festival - a little part. But I remember thinking this would be a great way of making a living ... to be an actor. I never really thought I'd make a lot of money at it.
Daniel Stern
#97. It feels good, it feels like a badge of honor, honestly. Amongst the artists here, in California, that festival is such a big deal. People live and die for Coachella. So to be a part of it on such a big scale is really flattering, and I feel really lucky to be part of the community.
Zella Day
#98. I never met Publo Picasso. I took pictures at the Festival d'Avignon, but I was too shy to ask to go in his studio. It does not look like me now, but I was very shy, and shy of men also. I think there was a world that frightened me totally.
Agnes Varda
#100. What I see for the band by the end of this year is the Complex live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I want my guys to be comfortable. I'm certainly not in this for the money, but I'd really like to see my guys make some money off of this stuff.
Jimmy Chamberlin
