Coming up with good characters

I was dreaming last night about the fine art of coming up with good, interesting and unique characters. I generally write somewhat cliched characters when I first sit down to write, then as time goes on, their quirks creep in to make them interesting. I was dreaming about the different facets of the characters - psychological background, motivation, likes and dislikes, physical habits, nervous quirks (if any), reactions to their evironment, speech patterns, etc. and how to get that all to come out in a story.

Am I the only one who gets these weird dreams?

At any rate, it was enlightening and got me thinking about my current book and how best to make my people pop out. I don't want to write the same character every time, so I've been using different aspects of myself and the people around me for each book. I know a lot of odd human beings and haven't yet run out of material. Hopefully no one will get the urge to run me over with their car if they recognize themselves in my books. Ha ha.

I've also noticed that my characters tend to be aggressive and have a morbidly amusing violent streak. I do not know people like that in real life, therefore this must be some odd psychological thing. I'm not going to analyze what that says about me. I'm just not going to. :-)