A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
BARRY HANNAHA writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
BARRY HANNAHLove and despair go hand in hand.
BARRY HANNAHI 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 HANNAHI don’t really care about plot; I want to have a page-turner in a different kind of way.
BARRY HANNAHI 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 HANNAHYou need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
BARRY HANNAHMost novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.
BARRY HANNAHTime 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 HANNAHLiterature is the history of the soul.
BARRY HANNAHWhat a bog and labyrinth the human essence is… We are all overbrained and overemotioned.
BARRY HANNAHThe 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 HANNAHIf you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren’t really there.
BARRY HANNAHI always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
BARRY HANNAHThe 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.
BARRY HANNAHRandomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.
BARRY HANNAHMy stories do have plot. They’re not just scattered language; they’re controlled, toward an end.
BARRY HANNAH