Quotes from Susan Cain

I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country.

...if you can think of meetings you've attended, you can probably recall a time - plenty of times - when the opinion of the most dynamic or talkative person prevailed to the detriment of all.

What's interesting is relative levels of introversion tend to stay the same. If you went back to your reunion from school, you would probably find that if you ranked everyone in your class into terms of levels of introversion and extroversion you'd still be the same rank.

I'm continually amazed by how many people who appear to be extroverts are actually introverts.

Shyness is about the fear of social judgments - at a job interview or a party you might be excessively worried about what people think of you. Whereas an introvert might not feel any of those things at all, they simply have the preference to be in a quieter setting.

Any time people come together in a meeting, we're not necessarily getting the best ideas; we're just getting the ideas of the best talkers.

Love is essential, gregariousness is optional.

What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

To some extent, we've always had an admiration for extroversion in our culture. But the extrovert ideal really came to play at the turn of the 20th century when we had the rise of big business.

It's important for a parent to learn to take delight in a child whose behavior might seem mystifying. In the case of an extroverted parent with an introverted child, it can be learning to see the inner riches of your child that may not always be expressed on the surface - but are there.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these people described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.

Solitude matters, and for some people it is the air that they breathe.

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I'm never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.

I think the shyness one feels in childhood is often overcome with time. There are children who hide behind their parents' legs, but you don't see grown-ups hiding behind people. It just doesn't happen. I mean, not that often. People develop social skills over time.

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.

You will find this hard to believe, but I've never laughed as much as I did when I was a corporate lawyer. When you're working 16 hours a day for months at a time, you get punchy. Everything and everyone seems hilarious.

Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them.

Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.

Introverts living under the Extroversion Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them. Parenting can pose unique challenges for introverted parents, who fear that their own painful experiences will be repeated in their children's lives.

Introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly.

Originally, technology was pretty clearly on the side of introversion. It allowed introverts to connect with people, to express their ideas in a less stimulating way: you're sitting alone behind a computer. But I'm starting to think that the pressure to self-present constantly online is becoming so extreme.

I use a lot of old-fashioned expressions.