Quote

You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.

Barry Hannah

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barry Hannah
Age: 67 †
Born: 1942
Born: April 23
Died: 2010
Died: March 1
Author
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Meridian
Mississippi
Howard Barry Hannah
Needs
Joy
Bits
Hell
Need
Great

More quotes by Barry Hannah

Image
I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.
Barry Hannah
Image
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
Barry Hannah
Image
Children will listen to anything elders say to survive, and if you grew up without an elder telling you there was a god, what did your parents say to you?
Barry Hannah
Image
The point is to strip down, get protestant, then even more naked. Walk over scorched bricks to find your own soul. Your heart a searching dog in the rubble.
Barry Hannah
Image
My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language they're controlled, toward an end.
Barry Hannah
Image
A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
Barry Hannah
Image
I don't really care about plot I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.
Barry Hannah
Image
Where is the angry machine of all of us? Why is God such a blurred magician? Why are you begging for your life if you believe those things? Prove to me that you’re better than the rabbits we ate last night.
Barry Hannah
Image
The wild stuff is all so overrated. Drinking, you don't feel good all the time. There's a lot of down, a lot of misery.
Barry Hannah
Image
The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
Barry Hannah
Image
Literature is the history of the soul.
Barry Hannah
Image
I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.
Barry Hannah
Image
When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.
Barry Hannah
Image
Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.
Barry Hannah
Image
What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.
Barry Hannah
Image
My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.
Barry Hannah
Image
The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't.
Barry Hannah
Image
Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you.
Barry Hannah
Image
Professional Southerners sicken me.
Barry Hannah
Image
Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.
Barry Hannah