Wherever I've been in my life, in whatever situation, wherever I've lived and worked alongside other people, I've always been considered an intruder or, at least, a stranger. Among my relatives as among my acquaintances, I've always been thought of as an outsider. Not that even once have I been treated like that consciously, but other people's spontaneous response to me ensured that I was. Everyone everywhere has always treated me kindly. Very few people, I think, have had so few raise their voice against them, or been so little frowned at, so infrequently the object of someone else's arrogance or irritability. But the kindness with which I was treated was always devoid of affection. For those who would naturally be closest to me, I was always a guest who, as such, was well treated, but only with the attentiveness due to a stranger and the lack of affection which is the lot of the intruder. I'm sure that the source of all this -- I mean other people's attitudes towards me -- lies principally in some obscure intrinsic flaw in my own temperament. Perhaps I communicate a coldness that unwittingly obliges others to reflect back my own lack of feeling. I get to know people quickly. It doesn't take long for them to grow to like me. But I never really gain their affection. I've never experienced devotion. To be loved has always seemed to me an impossibility, as unlikely as a complete stranger suddenly addressing me familiarly by my first name.