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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.

Barry Hannah

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.
BARRY HANNAH

Done Much Too Vague 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.
BARRY HANNAH

Belief Gratitude Writing
If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren’t really there.
BARRY HANNAH

Able Men Suffering
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?
BARRY HANNAH

Children Grew Parents Up
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Alcohol Drinking Hate
I found out about reviews early on. They’re mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That’s probably why I’m less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.
BARRY HANNAH

Afternoon Men Thoughtful
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
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Beautiful Thinking Two
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Believe Thinking Writing
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.
BARRY HANNAH

School Students Teacher
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
You’ve got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.
BARRY HANNAH

Halfway Interested Lie Lying
I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.
BARRY HANNAH

Audience Country Light Misjudge
Literature is the history of the soul.
BARRY HANNAH

History Literature Soul
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barry Hannah Quotes