Quote

A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

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
Thing
Chosen
Destroy
Writers
Build
Means
Jobs
Back
Mean

More quotes by 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
Love and despair go hand in hand.
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
I do believe that as you write more and age, the arrogance and most of the vanity goes. Or it is a vanity met with vast gratitude, that you were hit by something as you stood in the way of it, that anybody is listening.
Barry Hannah
Image
I thought I was writing for a fairly hip, intelligent crowd I just thought there were more of them out there. But they're not. They're not out there waiting. They're not gonna use their intelligence on your book.
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
The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
Barry Hannah
Image
I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities out of the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.
Barry Hannah
Image
Literature is the history of the soul.
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 wouldn't buy somebody's album on a dare if they called him a musician's musician. I don't write to be a writer's writer. I don't want to be like the little-magazine writer.
Barry Hannah
Image
My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language they're controlled, toward an end.
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
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
I hate to be fatalistic about it, but alcoholism, it's just in your genes. We had some of it in my family, and it just got me.
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
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
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
Professional Southerners sicken me.
Barry Hannah