John Williams Quotes

“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

“There's nothing worse than being alone when you aren't strong enough to face your own thoughts. You can stand it just so long, and then––Well, then you just can't be alone any longer. You've got to do something, no matter how silly it is. You've got to make yourself believe you aren't alone, even if you are.”
― John Williams

“You'd be hard-pressed to find a human who can't hum the opening lines of Darth Vader's theme, "The Imperial March," or describe one of the iconic scenes it underscores in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It would be far more difficult to find someone who knows that John Williams's longtime collaborator on that film and many others was Angela Morley, a transgender woman who is responsible for some of the most memorable scores in film and television.”
― Mackenzi Lee, Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World

“Vagava per i corridoi della biblioteca dell’università, in mezzo a migliaia di libri, inalando l’odore stantio del cuoio e della tela delle vecchie pagine, come se fosse un incenso esotico.
Certe volte si fermava, prendeva un volume da uno scaffale e lo teneva per un istante tra le sue manone, che vibravano al contatto ancora insolito con il dorso e il bordo e le pagine docili. Poi cominciava a sfogliarlo, leggendo qualche paragrafo qua e là, e le sue dita rigide giravano le pagine con infinita attenzione, quasi timorose di distruggere, con la loro rozzezza, ciò che avevano scoperto con tanta fatica.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A special edition of the literary classic

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel

“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.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel