Thomas Mann, early in life, felt himself to be "different" from others around him and "isolated" from the normal life that others enjoyed. He attributed these feelings to what he felt was his descent from a sound Bürger life to unsound Künstlertum. These feelings of guilt and suffering prodded Mann into applying his introspective-artistic techniques to his own condition. He examined his own life, considered his own world and his relationship to it, and came to certain conclusions. Many of Mann's works are therefore not "fiction" at all'; he himself once stated that all of his works were autobiographical.