Quote

I don't really care about plot I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.

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
Kind
Really
Way
Turner
Plot
Page
Pages
Care
Different

More quotes by Barry Hannah

Image
My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.
Barry Hannah
Image
Time is what makes good stories. Much has been cooking for a long time, and at last finds an out in narration one day. That's a supreme joy. And why the characters keep showing up.
Barry Hannah
Image
Whoever you are, be that person with all your might. Time goes by faster than we thought. It is a thief so quiet. You must let yourself be loved and you must love, parts of you that never loved must open and love. You must announce yourself in all particulars so you can have yourself.
Barry Hannah
Image
Literature is the history of the soul.
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 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
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
If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.
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
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 don't really believe in a creative-writing major as an undergraduate. It's a bad idea, terrible. I've met creative-writing majors from other places and they don't know a goddamn thing. They're the worst students. They just think they're good because they could pass.
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
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'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
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
Barry Hannah
Image
What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.
Barry Hannah
Image
The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
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
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