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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.

Barry Hannah

Literature is the history of the soul.
BARRY HANNAH

History Literature Soul
A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
BARRY HANNAH

Chosen Jobs Mean
I don’t really care about plot; I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.
BARRY HANNAH

Care Different Plot
My stories do have plot. They’re not just scattered language; they’re controlled, toward an end.
BARRY HANNAH

Language Plot Stories
Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you… they’re a little away from you.
BARRY HANNAH

Away Littles Trance Voice
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Thinking Two Writing
Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.
BARRY HANNAH

Joy Narrative Pain
Professional Southerners sicken me.
BARRY HANNAH

Professional Sicken Southerner
If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren’t really there.
BARRY HANNAH

Able Men Suffering
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
BARRY HANNAH

Audience Country Light Misjudge
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 Joy Long
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

Clubs Glee Long
You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
BARRY HANNAH

Great Hell Joy Needs
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

Belief Gratitude Writing
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 Jumping Writing
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Believe Night Rabbits

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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