John Williams Quotes

Middle age, my boy. No memory at all. ~ John Williams

Working in Hollywood for the orchestra world is a very time consuming and laborious job. ~ John Williams

The album for Fiddler really took off. I think it was a combination of John Williams and the score. It was a very classy big album. ~ Norman Jewison

What did you expect? ~ John Williams

she had never been alone to care for her own self one day of her life, nor could it ever have occurred to her that she might become responsible for the well- being of another. ~ John Williams

...and he wondered if he appeared as ludicrous to others as he did to himself. ~ John Williams

He felt himself at last beginning to be a teacher, which is simply a man to whom his book is true, to whom is given a dignity of art that has little to do with his foolishness or weakness or inadequacy as a man. ~ John Williams

So I must be locked up, where I can be safely irresponsible, where I can do no harm. ~ John Williams

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

My God, to read without joy is stupid. ~ John Williams

He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. ~ John Williams

Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failutre that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine."

And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?

What did you expect? he asked himself. ~ John Williams

He had no friends and for the first time in his life he became aware of loneliness. Sometimes, in his attic room at night, he would look up from a book he was reading and gaze in the dark corners of his room, where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If he stared long and intently, the darkness gathered into a light, which took the insubstantial shape of what he had been reading. ~ John Williams

John Williams is best known for his novels, Nothing But the Night, Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, and Augustus, for which he won the National Book Award in 1973. ~ John Edward Williams

Saying, ain't doing. ~ John Williams

Later, William Stoner could not remember how he learned these things, that first afternoon and early evening at Josiah Claremont's house; for the time of his meeting was blurred and formal, like the figured tapestry on the stair wall off the foyer. ~ John Williams

William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: 'Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.'

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual questions. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers. ~ John Williams

John is almost famous for not being famous," Williams compadre Dan Wakefield complained in 1986. "This is Hemingway without bluster, Fitzgerald without fashion, Faulkner stripped of pomp. ~ DanWakefield

a quotation from the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset as an epigraph for Stoner: "A hero is one who wants to be himself." In ~ John Williams

Satellites can see your thoughts, but not through rock,' is like something they might say. In John William's case, it was conscious hyperbole and therefore commentary. At one level, it was reefer-inspired. It was partly for fun. It was other things, too-but not derangement. I give no credence to the interpretation, and I knew him better than anybody. ~ David Guterson

He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire... ~ John Williams

But don't you know, Mr. Stoner?" Sloane asked. "Don't you understand about yourself yet? You're going to be a teacher."
Suddenly Sloane seemed very distant, and the walls of the office receded. Stoner felt himself suspended in the wide air, and he heard his voice ask, "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Sloane said softly.
"How can you tell? How can you be sure?"
"It's love, Mr. Stoner," Sloane said cheerfully. "You are in love. It's as simple as that. ~ John Williams

Troy and Sandra and Gabe acted out a lightsaber battle that brought tears to Elena's eyes, probably because they were all three singing the John Williams music. ~ Rainbow Rowell

The best book I read in 2007 was Stoner by John Williams. It's perhaps the best book I've read in years. ~ Stephen Elliott

He continued, "I just want to say that your paper was the best discussion I know of the subject, and I'm grateful that you volunteered to give it. ~ John Williams

A horse is wonderfully sensitive for an animal of his size and strength. He is timid by nature and his courage comes only from his confidence in man. His speed, strength, and endurance he will willingly give, and give it to the utmost, if the hand that guides is strong and gentle, and the voice that controls is firm, confident, and friendly. Lack of courage in the master takes from the horse his only chance of being brave; lack of steadiness makes him indirect and futile; lack of kindness frightens him into actions which are the result of terror at first, and which become vices only by mismanagement. ~ John Williams Streeter

But before [William Stoner] the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration. He saw it as the great University library, to which new wings might be built, to which new books might be added and from which old ones might be withdrawn, while its true nature remained essentially unchanged. ~ John Williams

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 Williams

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 Williams

A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day. ~ John Williams

They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been. ~ John Williams

As a youngster, I never dreamed there could be a career actually earning a living writing music. ~ John Williams

Thank you, for creating this vast and flexible playground. Thank you for creating one of the twentieth century's most popular myths, a gift that has brought billions of happy viewing hours at a critical time in world history, a time when perhaps, we need more than ever to blieve in honor, sacrifice, heart, and that special magic called life itself.
As long as I live I will never forget The Moment when Luke Skywalker flew so desperately into the Death Star's trench, John William's score soaring magnificently, and the audience overwhelmed by Industrial Light and Magic's mind-bending inaugural. At that pulse-pounding moment, a moment when it seemed the individual human being could have no point or purpose, no meaning in a universe so vast and cybernetic, we heard Obi-Wan Kenobi whisper that we should trust our feelings.
The Force flows through us. It controls us. We control it. Life creates it. It is more powerful than any Death Star.
Hundreds of millions of people said yes, and sighed, and applauded, and went home or turned off their videos feeling just a little more empowered than they did before the lights went down and the Twentieth Century-Fox fanfare came up.
No small feat.
May the Force be with you, Mr. Lucas.
And with us all. Always". ~ Steven Barnes

James Horner, James Newton Howard, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, or Ramin Djawadi would all be a dream come true for a 'Throne of Glass' soundtrack. ~ Sarah J. Maas

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 Williams

I was never that into the movies. Never. Even as a youngster. I became interested in movie music only because of the studio orchestras in Hollywood. ~ John Williams

There is no proof that carbon dioxide is causing or precedes global warming ... All indications are that the minor warming cycle finished in 2001 and that Arctic ice melting is related to cyclical orbit-tilt-axis changes in earth's angle to the sun. ~ John Williams

...everything you say is a fact, but none of it is true ~ John Williams

Begone, begone, you bloody whoreson Gauls! ~ John Williams

-"Say no more," Leif interrupted. "I understand. I will simply have to kill them all myself."
-"There he goes again. I'm telling you, Danny Elfman would love to get hold of those lines."
-"Not John Williams?"
-"If you've got some hopelessly overmatched heroes fighting evil and some Imperial types marching, John Williams is your guy. You need a song to make people reach for a box of Kleenex, talk to Randy Newman. But if you want creepy atmospherics and spine-shivering chords to back up your casual death threats, you gotta bring in Danny Elfman. ~ Kevin Hearne

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

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 Williams

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 Williams

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself. ~ John Edward Williams

You mustn't give it up," he said, and his voice took on an urgency that he could not understand. "No matter how hard it will seem sometimes, you mustn't give it up. It's too good for you to give it up. Oh, it's good, there's no doubt of it. ~ John Williams

You may need to refresh ~ John Williams

So the bed that had been the arena of their passion became the support of her illness. ~ John Williams

He felt both shame and pride, and over it all a bitter disappointment, in himself and in the time and circumstance that made him possible. ~ John Williams

As he got to know her better, he learned more of her childhood; and he came to realize that it was typical of that of most girls of her time and circumstance. She was educated upon the premise that she would be protected from the gross events that life might thrust in her way, and upon the premise that she had no other duty than to be a graceful and accomplished accessory to that protection, since she belonged to a social and economic class to which protection was an almost sacred obligation. She ~ John Williams

For me, there is a strong family connection to Boston and anything connected to Boston, which includes Fenway. ~ John Williams

I think of myself as a film composer. ~ John Williams

I have come to believe in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself. ~ John Williams

Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue. ~ John Williams

We need not forgive ourselves," he (Augustus) said. "It has been a marriage. It has been better than most. ~ John Williams

Sometimes Edith came into the room and sat on the bed beside him and they talked. They talked of trivial things - of people they knew casually, of a new building going up on the campus, of an old one torn down; but what they said did not seem to matter. A new tranquility had come between them. It was a quietness that was like the beginning of love; and almost without thinking, Stoner knew why it had come. They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been.
Almost without regret he looked at her now; in the soft light of late afternoon her face seemed young and unlined. If I had been stronger, he thought; if I had known more; if I could have understood. And finally, mercilessly, he thought: if I had loved her more. As if it were a long distance it had to go, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand. She did not move; and after a while he drifted into a kind of sleep. ~ John Williams

He felt at times that he was a kind of vegetable, and he longed for something - even pain - to pierce him, to bring him alive. He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. ~ John Williams

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

As a young pianist in Hollywood, I began orchestrating for others, and I just felt really comfortable doing that. ~ John Williams

Shock waves to a tired brain, sends that hungry lady to my door again. She's my shelter from the storm when I feel the rain, entertaining white powder. ~ Elton John

Certainly a liberal education does manifest itself in a courtesy, propriety, and polish of word and action, which is beautiful in itself, and acceptable to others; but it does much more. It brings the mind into form, - for the mind is like the body. ~ John Henry Newman

My philosophy all my life has been the pursuit of excellence. ~ John Kluge

Something about looking up always makes me feel like I'm falling. ~ John Green

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence. ~ Saul Williams

I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate. ~ John Malkovich

Might be a quarter life crisis, just disturbin' in my soul. ~ John Mayer

John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said - very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

And there are men behind bars who pray for the light and there are men in the suburbs who pray for the night. ~ Elton John

Like an artist, or like anybody else who believes that his work justifies his life, Sassall – by our society's miserable standards – is a fortunate man. ~ John Berger

,m./But it is precisely at those moments when the glass seems to be 'set fair' that Fate invariably decides to take a hand. ~ John Bude

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception. ~ John Rawls

I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable. I just wasn't clever enough to actually enjoy it. ~ Wallace Shawn

Faith in Christ leaped from person to person like some divine epidemic, not of disease but of spiritual health. ~ John Charles Pollock

The odds are so stacked against you to have a music career in a place where there's virtually no music industry. So I always attribute it to God. ~ Pharrell Williams

See how our works lie under the curse of the law if they are tested by the standard of the law. ~ John Calvin

It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish which lies in the way to knowledge. ~ John Locke

I can't solve the world's problems, can't even begin to contemplate them all. But on my little corner of Earth, I at least can try to live in a way that treads lightly. ~ John Grogan

People just didn't write songs that were so directly emotional in those days. They still don't. Part of Hank's [Williams] thing was that he was opening up about relationships between men and women in ways that nobody else did, and I think that's something that made him stand out so much. His songs are just so straightforward about these really deep feelings that are universal, but they're so hard to write about without sounding sappy or over the top. You think of men in that era - they didn't express themselves that way. ~ Michael McCaul

power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutley ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Everyone thought because she was so too-ga-tha she didn't feel pain and the men she went with felt the same. ~ Sherley Anne Williams

Behind all political success is attention to detail." LARRY O'BRIEN, adviser to John F. Kennedy ~ Catherine Shaw

The smart phone isn't a perfect device, as we all know. It forces the world into a tiny screen. It runs out of battery, bandwidth, and power. It distracts us from the world around us. ~ John Battelle

On my honor, I swear to you, that from my first day in office to the last breath I draw, I will do everything in my power to make you proud of your government. ~ John McCain

Artists never seem to get bored with life. ~ John Kurtz

We shouldn't get hung up on the questions we can't answer because life, by definition, is confusing. We're never going to have all the answers. Never. We should focus on the questions we can answer and make peace with the ones we can't. ~ Nicole Williams

Most people who don't feel content with their lives don't know the reason why. Often they suspect that circumstances or other people are to blame. Even honest and self-aware individuals who know the problem lies inside of them still may have trouble getting to the root of the issue. They ask themselves, "Why am I this way?" They desire to change, but they don't do anything differently so that they can change. They merely hope things will turn out all right - and they become frustrated when they don't. Recognize that only when you make the right changes to your thinking do other things begin to turn out right in your life. ~ John C. Maxwell

all the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is above us by means of something familiar to ourselves, with the exception of any statement concerning the bodily sojourn of the God-Word. ~ John Damascene

The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back ~ John Maynard Keynes

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. ~ John Wooden

Ignorance is bliss ~ John Green

I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along. ~ John Fogerty

What is it about being married you miss?' Alan asked.

'Well, I miss my wife, you know," I said. 'But I also miss the feeling of, I don't know, comfort. The sense you're where you're supposed to be, with someone you're supposed to be with. I sure as hell don't feel that out here. We go places that we have to fight for, with people who might be dead the next day or the day after that. No offense.'

'None taken,' Keyes said.

'There's no stable ground out here,' I said. 'There's nothing out here I feel really safe about. My marriage had its ups and downs like anyone's, but when it came down to it, I knew it was solid. I miss that sort of security, and that sort of connection with someone. Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us. I miss meaning something to someone, having that part of being human. That's what I miss about marriage. ~ John Scalzi

For my part, I have worked all my life with eggs and embryos of frogs. Compared to other small animals, these have figured prominently in the world of literature. ~ John Gurdon

I receive many letters from people hoping to research their own houses. ~ Kate Williams

My life's a sequel to a movie where the actors' names have changed. ~ John Mayer

He smoked so much marijuana that his hair smelled like a cupboard crammed with oregano; ~ John Irving

I have a song called 'Decisions' that features Jamie Foxx, Mary J. Blige, John Legend and Common. It's about people who have made a decision to really stand by you as friends. ~ Busta Rhymes

Having the Creator in my life, having the spiritual connection to the divine intelligence that created me. ~ John Assaraf

Opium had artistic significance, you know. Picasso smoked. He said the scent of opium was the least stupid smell in the world, except for that of the sea. ~ John Baxter