Barry Hannah Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Barry Hannah's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Novelist Barry Hannah's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 42 quotes on this page collected since April 23, 1942! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
All quotes by Barry Hannah: Drinking Joy Writing more...
  • If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

    Men   Suffering   Able  
    Barry Hannah (2002). “Yonder Stands Your Orphan”, p.323, Grove Press
  • 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.

    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • The alcohol had the code and mystery about it as a writer's drug, but I'm glad that's been debunked. But the trouble with the drinking, much as I hate to admit it, is it helped the work.

    Hate   Drinking   Alcohol  
    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • 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.

    Believe   Night   Rabbits  
    Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.49, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
  • 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.

    Dog   Heart   Soul  
    Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.398, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
  • Literature is the history of the soul.

    Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.457, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
  • I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

    Light   Audience  
    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • 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.

    Love   Drinking   Writing  
  • My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.

    Plot   Stories   Language  
    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

    Lying   Halfway  
  • 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.

    Thinking   Agony   People  
  • 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.

    Character   Long   Joy  
  • Most novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.

    Long   Clubs   Glee  
  • Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.

    Pain   Joy   Narrative  
  • 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 (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.334, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
  • I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

    Art   Hurt   People  
  • I wake my wife up at 3 a.m. and say, "Listen to this!"

  • I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

    Boys   Practice   Endless  
  • I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

    Writing   Done   Too Much  
  • I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.

  • There was no one, when I was in school, who talked about going in and blowing up students. The teachers were very stern and hateable, but nobody ever mentioned murder.

    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

    Jobs   Mean   Chosen  
  • 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.

    Writing   Thinking   Two  
  • 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.

    Fun   Writing   Jumping  
  • 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.

    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

    Writing   Kind   Flaws  
  • My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

    Stories   Form   Concern  
  • Professional Southerners sicken me.

  • 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.

    Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.
  • You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.

    Joy   Needs   Hell  
    Barry Hannah (2007). “Yonder Stands Your Orphan”, p.29, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 42 quotes from the Novelist Barry Hannah, starting from April 23, 1942! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Barry Hannah quotes about: Drinking Joy Writing