Susan Cain

The trick for introverts is to honor their styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms.

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

Osborn was a founding partner of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBDO), but it was as an author that he really made his mark, beginning with the day in 1938 that a magazine editor invited him to lunch and asked what his hobby was. __magination,_ replied Osborn.

What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful - they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them.

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can.

I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy.

The longer you pause to process surprising or negative feedback, the more likely you are to learn from it.

If personal space is vital to creativity, so is freedom from "peer pressure".

Introverts living under the Extroversion Ideal are like women in a man__ world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we__e turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. 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.

It's not that there is no small talk...It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end...Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. 'When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.

There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.

Use your natural powers - of persistence, concentration, and insight - to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, and think deeply

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.Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.

Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They__e associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured...Spend your free the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.

Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never __ite_ or even hiss unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she processes his bite to mean that she__ terribly guilty__f something, anything, who knows what?