Harry Crews interviewed by Jim Knipfel in “Stories Told in Blood“
I mean, yeah, I’d been drinking pretty heavy. Look, it’s obvious that my job, or anybody that does the kind of thing that I do, novelist, dramatist and so on, I have to get out of my skin and get into his skin and see the world the way he saw it. To do that, you have to manufacture motives, which probably, more often than not, are wrong. He didn’t do it out of what you think he’s doing it out of. But you’re always asking yourself, what is this character acting out of? Why the hell is he like this? The answer’s never easy. You can’t just go back and say, ‘Well, his mama got on him when he was a little boy, and he never got over it.’ Welll, maybe that’s true, but that won’t take you very far.
(via Robert King)