Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.
“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.”
“I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.”