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
feet dust earth
Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
pennies might enough
I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.
inspirational life art
The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.
men elderly hands
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
god time oxen
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
differences unity genius
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
birthday race long
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
dog fleas
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
lines pavement doe
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
growing-up shapes toes
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
art thinking censorship
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
book reading pride
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
death years mind
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
truth lying ideas
You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.