Barry Hannah
Barry Hannah
Barry Hannahwas an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi. Hannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 23, 1942, and grew up in Clinton, Mississippi. He wrote eight novels and five short story collections...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 April 1942
CountryUnited States of America
stories plot language
My stories do have plot. They're not just scattered language; they're controlled, toward an end.
fun writing jumping
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.
joy needs hell
You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
gratitude believe writing
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.
plot care want
I don't really care about plot; I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.
writing done too-much
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.
essence labyrinth bogs
What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.
love-you thieves might
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.
light audience
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
soul literature
Literature is the history of the soul.
dog heart soul
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.
bank dad history insurance retired successful
My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.
southerner
Professional Southerners sicken me.
hate drinking alcohol
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.