Where Do Characters Come From?

In one sense, every character I write is some aspect of me. But in another sense, no character I write is really me. How does this make any sense?
Well, I am a conglomerate of all the people I have met and what they have said to me and what I saw them do. Add to that all the books I have read and the characters I have read about in them. Movies, television, songs, paintings, etc.
I choose to show certain aspects of myself which I have approved to the world. That means there are parts of me that I don’t show. There may be parts of me I don’t like. Those parts may or may not later came out in other events in my life. I may keep them suppressed forever.
The main difference between humans and the apes, our near-twins genetically, is the human capacity to think and reason, to act based on social expectation rather than what is expedient personally at the moment. Society is based on this. It may be good or bad, the way that social expectations form us, but it is very human.
In order to write characters well, even the most evil characters, I as a writer feel like I have to understand that character on some deep level. I have to know what sent an evil character in the direction. I should know some moment in the past when she wasn’t this character, when there was a chance for a different end. The evil character becomes evil in some combination of choice and fate, just like the good character does.
All characters are, therefore, on some level, me. And none of them are fully me, either. Because no matter how real and fully realized a character in a book is, there are only 100k words, a few hours that you get to spend with that character. There is no way that a real human is that simple.
So if you hate my characters, do you hate me? If you love my characters, do you love me? Both yes and no. I am so complex that all the novels I ever write will never encompass me. They are a hint about who I am, no more than that.