453 Quotes by Susan Cain

Now that you’re an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you’re told that you’re “in your head too much,” a phrase that’s often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.

I’m not saying abolish group work – I think there’s a time and a place for people to come together and exchange ideas, but let’s restore the respect we once had for solitude. And we need to be much more mindful of the way we come together.

If you enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth.

Kuhnen and Brian Knutson have found that men who are shown erotic pictures just before they gamble take more risks than those shown neutral images like desks and chairs. This is because anticipating rewards – any rewards, whether or not related to the subject at hand – excites our dopamine-driven reward networks and makes us act more rashly.

A software engineer named Tom kicks off, describing with great passion his relief at learning that there was “a physiological basis for the trait of sensitivity. Here’s the research! This is how I am! I don’t have to try to meet anyone’s expectations anymore. I.

I’m insatiably curious about human nature.

There’s a word for “people who are in their heads too much”: thinkers.

We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts – which means that we’ve lost sight of who we really are.

Drowsy extroverts behind the wheel should be especially careful – at least until they increase their arousal levels by chugging coffee or cranking up the radio. Conversely, introverts driving in loud, overly arousing traffic noise should work to stay focused, since the noise may impair their thinking.