“Well, Steven is a lot of things,” replied the composer. “He’s a director, he’s a producer, he’s a studio head, he’s a writer, he’s a philanthropist, he’s an educator. One thing he isn’t is a man you can say no to.”

“You never told me that before today,” said Spielberg, slightly, happily rattled.

Williams pointed out that Arnold Spielberg, the director’s WWII-veteran father, died at 102, was still working at the Shoah Foundation when he was 99 and 100. “This is what he expects from me,” said the composer, although it was clear Spielberg had held no such expectation.

Continued Williams, “I had a 90th birthday and I met a woman at my age up in Boston. She was a very nice lady, exactly the same age as I, and I said to her, the Greatest Decade in a man’s life is 80 to 90, if you have your health, because if you get to 90, there’s an enormous compensation. You see everything with such magnetic vision that you recognize the most beautiful thing in the world are Peruvian butterflies. There’s nothing more beautiful than that. And so it’s the greatest decade. And she said, ‘No, the greatest decade in a person’s life is 90 to 100. So I’ll stick around for a while… But also, you can’t retire from music. I said earlier, it’s like breathing. It’s your life. It’s my life. And so a day without music is a mistake.”

Quipped Spielberg in reply: “I gotta get working, to find out what the hell I’m doing next.”