Emotions: watch them honestly and the case closes itself. Anger arrives — you did not send for it. It has a temperature, a location, a shape in the chest or the hands. It burns through, and passes, and something remains after it that was also there before it, unburned. You say I am angry, but you would be more truthful saying anger is here. You say I am afraid when the truth is fear is visiting. Weather. Real weather — never deny the weather — but weather. The sky in which it moves does not become the storm. Not this.
Memories, the story of you: that long autobiography you consult to know who you are. Look at it as a researcher would. It is a handful of scenes — astonishingly few, if you count — heavily edited, the edits edited, retold until the retelling replaced the event. Other people remember the same scenes differently and are just as sure. Half your childhood is gone without a trace; what remains was selected by a frightened curator to support a particular character. That character is made of the same cloth as a character in any novel: description, no substance. And the proof is near at hand: the story is recalled. It appears, scene by scene, in something that is not a scene. The rememberer cannot be the remembered. Not this.
Roles: parent, child, profession, nationality, the religion you keep or left, the political shirt you wear. Costumes, every one — put on at a certain date, changed already more than once, worn differently in different rooms. You know this; notice that you know it. Not this.