the beauty of finding what it is that you love to do, and then finding the beauty of knowing that you will not be able to do that forever.

One of John’s most frequently told stories—so frequent it grew stale—was about the day he first watched the film with Spielberg in the spring of 1993. “You need a better composer than I am,” John said to Spielberg. “You’re right,” Spielberg replied: “But they’re all dead.”92

Reflecting on the message about priorities in Hook, he added: “I want to take the time to write some concert music, to travel less, and read, walk, and spend time with my grandchildren.”

“We have a few special years with our children where they’re the ones that want us around,” she pleads with him. “After that, you’re going to be running after them for a bit of attention. So fast, Peter. It’s a few years, and it’s over. And you are not being careful. And you are missing it.” Suddenly the film isn’t just a show—it has something

It’s a very odd feeling to know that I wrote the scores to all of the top five grossing films, and to seven of the top ten—I try not to think about it, but it does say something about luck, doesn’t it? I consider myself a very lucky man. And it’s healthy to remind myself that I probably wrote scores to more than my share of the bottom seven films

Music is a basic human need. We communicate verbally. We communicate with body language. But there comes a time when a shepherd picks up a flute or a hunter picks up a drum and plays out his joy or his pain. Music is an essential nutrient. Without it, we are incomplete.

Discipline is essential to creativity. Rarely is anything right the first time. Maybe, maybe you get it on the fifth try. Discipline involves tenacity and steadfastness. It has to be applied vigorously every day. Music is athletic. You have to train every day in order to perform. If you get lazy, you get weak. Musicians are like joggers. If you jog

For Miller, John was “a profound intellect and a profound intuition working in some sort of interplay—one feeding the other. So you can get the great analytical mind, and you can get the completely free, intuitive mind. But the synergy that happens when the two are together is in John Williams.”96

Williams has mastered the time-honored technique of composing music with “interchangeable parts,” a technique applied with equal success to automobile assembly by that granddaddy of corporate presidents, Henry Ford.85