How am I not myself?

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created-- nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want anyone to know or than we know ourselves. When I hear a man proclaiming himself an "average, honest, open fellow," I feel pretty sure that he has some definite and perhaps terrible abnormality which he has agreed to conceal--and his protestation of being average and honest and open is his way of reminding himself of his misprision.


F. Scott Fitzgerald