Susan Cain

Longing is the great human state.

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

"Expressive writing" encourages us to see our misfortunes not as flaws that make us unfit for worldly success (or otherworldly heaven), but as the seeds of our growth.

Where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum... influences our choice of friends and partners, and how we make conversation, resolve differences and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them.

We like art forms that express our longing for union, and for a more perfect and beautiful world.

In fact, you could say that what orients a person to the bittersweet is a heightened awareness of finality.

Our culture is biased against quiet and reserved people, but introverts are responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements.

Longing is momentum in disguise: It's active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine.

It doesn’t matter whether we consider ourselves "secular" or "religious": in some fundamental way, we're all reaching for the heavens.

I'm seeing businesses embrace the Quiet Revolution as the next great diversity issue of our time.

Embracing their quiet nature does not cause introverts to flee to a shack in the woods. It empowers them to engage with the world – but on their own terms.

Persistence isn’t very glamorous. If genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the 1 percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other 99 percent.