I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practising it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent.

Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That's why they look alike.

They served to remind Cabal - should a reminder ever be necessary - why his social skills were so poor: people were loathsome and not worth the practise.

I believe you learn social skills by mixing with people.

There is this mythology that says that when people are born, their brains are essentially fixed very early on and they're not able to change their connections. I was aware that was a myth and that people could learn new skills.

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.