Quote

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

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
Write
Magazines
Littles
Albums
Dare
Little
Musician
Writing
Wouldn
Like
Writer
Somebody
Magazine
Called
Album

More quotes by 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
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
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
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
Professional Southerners sicken me.
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
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
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
I don't really care about plot I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.
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
Love and despair go hand in hand.
Barry Hannah
Image
My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language they're controlled, toward an end.
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
Literature is the history of the soul.
Barry Hannah
Image
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
Barry Hannah
Image
The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
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
My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.
Barry Hannah