William Butler
William Butler
Multi-instrumentalist for the band Arcade Fire who plays bass, synth, guitar, and percussion. He has also worked on movie soundtracks, like the one for Her.
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth6 October 1982
lying spring loss
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.
dream imagination vision
I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.
children men wife
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
thinking convince-us want
I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
lonely cheer loneliness
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
fall blood passionate
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
time men elderly
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
lovely delight kind
Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
lasts beast hours
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
life disappointment long
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
poetry argument quarrels
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
adversity temptation soul
Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
beautiful time enemy
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
joy tragedy ireland-and-the-irish
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.