Even if you do succeed most people wouldn't notice anyway.

Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.

My father could be very distancing. My clearest memory is of him squatting, watering plants for hours and hours at a time, completely silent. He was very self-contained; my mother was more outgoing and chatty and social. I'm certainly more like her.

All you have is the writer's imagination. You have a very limited time to take this imaginary person and bring the details of their life, as you perceive them, to life. You attempt to do to that as fully and as vibrantly as you can. It's depressing to read how much you've failed. And it's not even particularly instructive or necessary to read how you succeeded because in the end don't you have to judge that?

I have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.

I don't have a saviour or a royal family.

Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.