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.”

“I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.”

“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.”

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

“My sense of the past is vivid and slow. I hear every sign and see every shadow.”

“Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.”

“Love and despair go hand in hand.”