Barry Hannah Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Dog, Heart, Soul

  Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.398, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  49 Copy quote

• Professional Southerners sicken me.

  Barry Hannah

  Southerner

  38 Copy quote

• Literature is the history of the soul.

  Barry Hannah

  Soul, Literature

  Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.457, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Love You, And Love, Thieves

  Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.334, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  25 Copy quote

• What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.

  Barry Hannah

  Essence, Labyrinth, Bogs

  Barry Hannah (2007). “Airships”, p.53, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  16 Copy quote

• The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.

  Barry Hannah

  Might, Howl, Wretched

  Barry Hannah (2010). “Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories”, p.123, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Long, Clubs, Glee

  4 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Stories, Form, Concern

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Gratitude, Believe, Writing

  10 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Joy, Needs, Hell

  Barry Hannah (2007). “Yonder Stands Your Orphan”, p.29, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Barry Hannah

  Writing, Done, Too Much

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Writing, Motorcycle

  10 Copy quote

• If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

  Barry Hannah

  Men, Suffering, Able

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

  10 Copy quote

• You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

  Barry Hannah

  Lying, Halfway

  5 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Pain, Joy, Narrative

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Barry Hannah

  Writing, Kind, Flaws

  7 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Different, Plot, Care

  Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.

  4 Copy 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

  Writing, Musician, Albums

  Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Fun, Writing, Jumping

  7 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Plot, Stories, Language

  Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Hate, My Family, Genes

  Source: www.believermag.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Agony, People

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Long, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• I never pulled a loaded pistol on anybody, but it got around that I did. It got turned into lore. It's a myth. There's so much bad gun stuff.

  Barry Hannah

  Gun, Pistols, Stuff

  Interview with Wells Tower, believermag.com. October 1, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Barry Hannah

  Boys, Practice, Endless

  4 Copy quote

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