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I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

Barry Hannah

I don’t write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that’s it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.
BARRY HANNAH

Country Motorcycle Writing
You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
BARRY HANNAH

Great Hell Joy Needs
My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.
BARRY HANNAH

Concern Form Stories
A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.
BARRY HANNAH

Chosen Jobs Mean
My stories do have plot. They’re not just scattered language; they’re controlled, toward an end.
BARRY HANNAH

Language Plot Stories
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
Literature is the history of the soul.
BARRY HANNAH

History Literature Soul
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
What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is… We are all overbrained and overemotioned.
BARRY HANNAH

Bogs Essence Labyrinth
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Agony People Thinking
Professional Southerners sicken me.
BARRY HANNAH

Professional Sicken Southerner
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
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
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
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.
BARRY HANNAH

Album Musician Writing

I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

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I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

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