Quiet Quotes

“It’s also vital to recognize that many people—especially introverts like Steve Wozniak—need extra quiet and privacy in order to do their best work.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“For ten years, beginning in 2000, Fried asked hundreds of people (mostly designers, programmers, and writers) where they liked to work when they needed to get something done. He found that they went anywhere but their offices, which were too noisy and full of interruptions.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“the earliest open-source creators didn’t share office space—often they didn’t even live in the same country. Their collaborations took place largely in the ether. This is not an insignificant detail. If you had gathered the same people who created Linux, installed them in a giant conference room for a year, and asked them to devise a new operating system, it’s doubtful that anything so revolutionary would have occurred—for reasons we’ll explore in the rest of this chapter.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas,”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“All of this would be fine if more talking were correlated with greater insight, but research suggests that there’s no such link.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“many introverts are shy, partly as a result of receiving the message that there’s something wrong with their preference for reflection, and partly because their physiologies, as we’ll see, compel them to withdraw from high-stimulation environments.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality—and opened up a Pandora’s”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“And anger is not just damaging in the moment; for days afterward, venters have repair work to do with their partners. Despite the popular fantasy of fabulous sex after fighting, many couples say that it takes time to feel loving again. What can Greg do to calm down when he feels his fury mounting? He can take a deep breath. He can take a ten-minute break. And he can ask himself whether the thing that’s making him so angry is really that important. If not, he might let it go. But if it is, then he’ll want to phrase his needs not as personal attacks but as neutral discussion items. “You’re so antisocial!” can become “Can we figure out a way to organize our weekends that works for us both?” This advice would hold even if Emily weren’t a sensitive introvert (no one likes to feel dominated or disrespected), but it so happens that Greg’s married to a woman who is especially put off by anger. So he needs to respond to the conflict-avoidant wife he has, not the confrontational one that he wishes, at least in the heat of the moment, he were married to.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“It turned out that the introverts who were especially good at acting like extroverts tended to score high for a trait that psychologists call “self-monitoring.” Self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation. They look for cues to tell them how to act. When in Rome, they do as the Romans do, according to the psychologist Mark Snyder, author of Public Appearances, Private Realities, and creator of the Self-Monitoring Scale.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“First, when he looked closely at the existing studies on personality and leadership, he found that the correlation between extroversion and leadership was modest. Second, these studies were often based on people’s perceptions of who made a good leader, as opposed to actual results. And personal opinions are often a simple reflection of cultural bias.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Americans revered action and were suspicious of intellect, associating the life of the mind with the languid, ineffectual European aristocracy they had left behind.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“But even if you’re stretching yourself in the service of a core personal project, you don’t want to act out of character too much, or for too long. Remember those trips Professor Little made to the restroom in between speeches? Those hideout sessions tell us that, paradoxically, the best way to act out of character is to stay as true to yourself as you possibly can—starting by creating as many “restorative niches” as possible in your daily life. “Restorative niche” is Professor Little’s term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls. It can mean canceling your social plans on the weekend before a big meeting at work, practicing yoga or meditation, or choosing e-mail over an in-person meeting. (Even Victorian ladies, whose job effectively was to be available to friends and family, were expected to withdraw for a rest each afternoon.)”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. Free Trait Theory explains why an introvert might throw his extroverted wife a surprise party or join the PTA at his daughter’s school. It explains how it’s possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. As these examples suggest, Free Trait Theory applies in many different contexts, but it’s especially relevant for introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Carnegie’s metamorphosis from farmboy to salesman to public-speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie’s journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality—and opened up a Pandora’s Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“So what’s John’s secret for relating to his forceful wife? He lets her know that her words were unacceptable, but he also tries to listen to their meaning. “I try to tap into my empathy,” he says. “I take her tone out of the equation. I take out the assault on my senses, and I try to get to what she’s trying to say.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“There comes a time that people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression,”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual—the kind who’s comfortable “putting himself out there.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The introverted leaders were 20 percent more likely to follow the suggestion—and their teams had 24 percent better results than the teams of the extroverted leaders.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“We tend to forget that there’s nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it’s the best way to learn but because it’s cost-efficient,”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“One of the best things you can do for an introverted child is to work with him on his reaction to novelty. Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don’t mistake your child’s caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He’s recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“If you’re thinking in more complicated ways,” she told me, “then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Some of the world’s most talented people are introverts.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“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.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking