You are right and not.
Result list is retrieved from database or cache with the org.hibernate.loader.Loader class. When cache is not enabled, prepared statement is build using the Dialect object which is created in SessionFactoryImp. So, statements either initialized per list call.
Besides, low-level query is generated automatically. Basically, it is an aid, but there may be a case when a specific query will be more effective when manually written.
