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 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.
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.
thinking agony people
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.
writing thinking two
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.
people
I was born in Clinton, Mississippi, which had 1,500-2,500 people when I was growing up - a village.
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.
aunts family loved sisters uncles wonderful
My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely.
help nearly teacher teaching
I wouldn't be happy had I only been a teacher, if all I had done was help young people, frankly. I don't get nearly the joy teaching as I do out of creation.
absolute artificial certainly create freedom grow plenty rush
I had absolute freedom to create things on my own and in silence. No rush, the artificial rush by media. Certainly no rush to grow up. We had plenty of boyhood, plenty of girlhood.
arrange minutes morning pitch
Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. 'Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you've been working with pitch and tar on this brush.
love
I hate editing. I love to write, but I hate to reread my stuff. To revise.
chosen destroy job
A writer's job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.
certain consume perhaps whether
I don't go around thinking about regret; regret doesn't consume me as a person... I'm not certain about whether any writer, any artist, any musician, can write without regret, so I don't think perhaps it's even particularly Southern.