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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

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 wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.
BARRY HANNAH

Boys Endless Practice
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
Professional Southerners sicken me.
BARRY HANNAH

Professional Sicken Southerner
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
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
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
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 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 grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.
BARRY HANNAH

Art Hurt People
You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
BARRY HANNAH

Great Hell Joy Needs
You’ve got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.
BARRY HANNAH

Halfway Interested Lie Lying
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
Literature is the history of the soul.
BARRY HANNAH

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

Care Different Plot
I hate to be fatalistic about it, but alcoholism, it’s just in your genes. We had some of it in my family, and it just got me.
BARRY HANNAH

Alcoholism Family Genes Hate
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
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

Drinking Feel Good Stuff
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
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
Love and despair go hand in hand.
BARRY HANNAH

Despair Feel Hands Love
If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren’t really there.
BARRY HANNAH

Able Men Suffering
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
My stories do have plot. They’re not just scattered language; they’re controlled, toward an end.
BARRY HANNAH

Language Plot Stories
I wake my wife up at 3 a.m. and say, “Listen to this!”
BARRY HANNAH

Inspiration Listen Love Say Wife
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barry Hannah Quotes