John Williams Quotes

“There's a very basic human, non-verbal aspect to our need to make music and use it as part of our human expression. It doesn't have to do with body movements, it doesn't have to do with articulation of a language, but with something spiritual.”

“Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.”

“So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories.”

“A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.”

“It was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. It was himself that he was slowly shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.”

“The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us.”

“To continue to work, to continue to love what you do, is certainly a contributing element to one's longevity and health.”

“I don't make a particular distinction between 'high art' and 'low art.' Music is there for everybody. It's a river we can all put our cups into and drink it and be sustained by it.”

“Composing music is hard work.”

“You never write a theme for a movie thinking, 'This will live forever.”

“There are occasionally eureka moments - off the top of my head, maybe Darth Vader's theme, you know, the imperial march.”

“I am so lucky to be working in a field that you never grow tired of.”

“When we see Rey, we want to hear Rey's theme, and when the Force is referred to or felt, we want to hear the Force theme.”

“As a youngster, I never dreamed there could be a career actually earning a living writing music.”

“I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work.”

“Working in Hollywood for the orchestra world is a very time consuming and laborious job.”

“I let it go. I have not looked at the 'Star Wars' films, and that's absolutely true.”

“The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy.”

“It was not music that might describe terra incognita but the opposite of that, music that would put us in touch with very familiar and remembered emotions, which for me as a musician translated into the use of a nineteenth-century operatic idiom, if you like, Wagner and this sort of thing.”

“It's a bit like adding paragraphs to a letter that's been going on for a number of years… it's an extension of something that's been really organic and continually growing.”

“There is a sense in society today that you can obtain everything so fast, and by the time you're 25 you'll be so rich you don't even have to work anymore. For someone wanting to be a musician, seeing that someone like John Williams took his time to get there is mega inspiring.”

“It's a bit like adding paragraphs to a letter that's been going on for a number of years. Starting with a completely new film, a story that I don't know, characters that I haven't met, my whole approach to writing music is completely different. Which I do here, but here it's an extension of something that's been really organic and continually growing.”

“It's a bit like riding a bike that you haven't been on since you were ten years old. You do remember.”

“John Williams has written the soundtrack to our lives.”

“For someone wanting to be a musician, or an actor, a director, or a writer, seeing that someone like John Williams took his time to get there is mega inspiring in a world where you feel that your career and your life can be as quick as a swipe on an Instagram page.”