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
believe night machines
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.
children parent grew
Children will listen to anything elders say to survive, and if you grew up without an elder telling you there was a god, what did your parents say to you?
writing albums magazines
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.
gun pistols stuff
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.
teacher school students
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.
believe writing thinking
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.
drinking feel-good stuff
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.
jobs mean chosen
A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
might howl wretched
The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
inspiration wife my-wife
I wake my wife up at 3 a.m. and say, "Listen to this!"
lying halfway
You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.
long clubs glee
Most novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.
beautiful thinking two
The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't.
pain joy narrative
Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.