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.

I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.

Back in the mid '90s, I went to a film festival, and they were airing 'Central Park West' at the same time as this cute little romantic comedy movie called 'French Exit,' and I got to go from one theater where I was goofy, falling over myself, to this kind of evil vixen kind of character.

No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks.

I owe my discovery of the Hot Club of Cowtown to Kinky Friedman, leader of the Texas Jewboys. When I saw that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were headlining the 2003 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, I thought it my duty to check out the band that had inspired the Texas Jewboys.

I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I'm eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry.

I've always wanted to be a DJ so I could play the music I love for other people. That feeling hasn't changed, but my sets are always evolving. In terms of tailoring to a specific crowd, certainly I do play differently depending on the situation. It's a different feel, for example, in a small club versus a festival.

I've been a part of Margazhi festival even as a little boy. I used to accompany my mom to concerts held by the Music Academy.

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

I was at a pharmaceutical conference in Dallas and bored out of my head. I'd split up from my missus and went downtown and had my kids' initials done, JLD, for Joseph, Luke and Daniel. Then I got back with my wife so I had her initials added during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - after I'd waited a few years to see if the marriage would work!

The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

I had spent four months in Cedar City, Utah, right after graduation as an intern at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. It's a town that has many people living the polygamous lifestyle.

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

So, where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?

There is nothing in this world that I love more than my family. To be able to share the joy of running with them at the Runner's World Half Marathon and Running Festival where we can all participate together is as close as you can get to a perfect weekend.

After years of touring you experience music festivals that are mostly the same - where you copy and paste the same experience into a muddy field in California or a muddy field in England.

In our family, and not just us but even with my cousins, uncles and aunts, we celebrate every festival - be it Christmas, Easter, Eid, Diwali or our birthdays.

Easter is an ancient festival of rebirth, but it's also an excellent excuse for eating eggs. I really like eggs, of both the chocolate and chicken variety. But the chocolate ones, you must admit, can sustain only a fleeting interest. A sweet, sugary hit - and then it's gone.

When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed.

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.

There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.

Throughout history, Hanukkah was a relatively minor festival, but it's become very popular in America due to its proximity to Christmas.

We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.

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.