Barry Hannah Quotes

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

I've summarized dozens of books in my literary career; it's become rather second nature.

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

I wasn't going to be a college kid. The only subject I was interested in was English. I think I had a subconscious interest in analyzing story.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.

In graduate school, I was a student of E.L. Doctorow, and he had us read 'Moby-Dick' in a week.

I've found that writers who don't read really can't write.

I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.

I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities.

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.

If you don't believe in yourself, and you don't have the fortitude to make that dream happen, why should the hotshots in the publishing world take a chance on you? I don't believe that you need an MFA to be a writer, but I do think you need to take some good workshops.

Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens