Literary Birthday – 23 April – Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah was born 23 April 1942 and died 1 March 2010.

Barry Hannah Quotes

1. Literature is the history of the soul.
2. 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.
3. You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.
4. 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.
5. My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.
6. I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I’ve had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.
7. My stories do have plot. They’re not just scattered language; they’re controlled, toward an end.

Barry Hannah was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi. He wrote eight novels, including Geronimo Rex, and five short story collections. Airships, his 1978 collection of short stories won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. He also received the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Source for quotes

 by Amanda Patterson

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