Flattery in Context

Understanding people is a good trick, but I haven’t ever really tried. I don't even really understand myself, much less another person. Beyond being called a “twit,” or “tugboat,” or “honk,” I remember very little adverse ever having been said to me. But, off and on, gratis, persons do and say things to me that make me feel affection for them. Why they do and say those things, I have learned, I will never really understand. I just know those things they have said to me or done, somehow revealed their very fine inner self and their flattering perception of me that draws me to them.