John Towner Williams Quotes

• 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.

  John Towner Williams

  Memories, People, Done

  95 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Towner Williams

  Spiritual, Expression, Needs

  "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" CD liner notes,

  72 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Towner Williams

  Inspiration, Vanity, Blue

  "The force is with him". Interview with Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2002.

  44 Copy quote

• I find that musically, looking back, I have learned much more from those relationships, people I have bumped into that I have admired, that's the way I feel musically I have learned most in life.

  John Towner Williams

  Player, People, Way

  30 Copy quote

• Lust and learning. That's really all there is, isn't it?

  John Towner Williams

  Lust

  21 Copy quote

• A chap can't pick the way he'll die, or we'd all do better at it.

  John Towner Williams

  Death, Dying, Way

  20 Copy quote

• I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions.

  John Towner Williams

  Frustrated, Relief, Variation

  "The force is with him". Interview with Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2002.

  18 Copy quote

• My God, to read without joy is stupid.

  John Towner Williams

  Stupid, Joy

  John Williams (2010). “Stoner”, p.13, New York Review of Books

  8 Copy quote

• You may need to refresh

  John Towner Williams

  Funeral, Needs, May

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Towner Williams

  Country, Competition, Healthy

  12 Copy quote

• Some kids, for some reason, it just doesn't click in the classroom as they need it to. We have college coaches talk to them, former high school athletes, motivational speakers, teachers, principals.

  John Towner Williams

  Teacher, Athlete, School

  12 Copy quote

• Middle age, my boy. No memory at all.

  John Towner Williams

  Memories, Boys, Age

  9 Copy quote

• There was a perception that the emerging-market problems aren't over and concern that may Brazil devalue.

  John Towner Williams

  Perception, Brazil, May

  8 Copy quote

• When you think about Boston, Harvard and M.I.T. are the brains of the city, and its soul might be Faneuil Hall or the State House or the Old Church. But I think the pulsing, pounding heart of Boston is Fenway Park.

  John Towner Williams

  Heart, Thinking, Boston

  9 Copy quote

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