453 Quotes by Susan Cain

Introverts tend to be driven by their interests and passions, naturally organizing their lives around the things they love most to do. This is a great boon, because focusing on one or two pursuits tends to build mastery in a given area, and mastery builds self-confidence – rather than the other way around.

Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect.

Caucasians, he said, seem to be “less afraid of other people thinking that what they said was too loud or too stupid.

The word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of “having a good personality” was not widespread until the twentieth.

Csikszentmihalyi, who between 1990 and 1995 studied the lives of ninety-one exceptionally creative people in the arts, sciences, business, and government, many of his subjects were on the social margins during adolescence, partly because “intense curiosity or focused interest seems odd to their peers.” Teens who are too gregarious to spend time alone often fail to cultivate their talents “because practicing music or studying math requires a solitude they dread.

It’s never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population.

To ask whether it’s nature or nurture, says Kagan, is like asking whether a blizzard is caused by temperature or humidity. It’s the intricate interaction between the two that makes us who we are.

You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.

I’m insatiably curious about human nature. I feel very lucky that as a writer I get to learn so much about it just to do my job right.