…We make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art and inventions—from the theory of evolution to van Gough’s sunflowers to the personal computer—came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there. Without introverts, the world would be devoid of:
the theory of gravity
the theory of relativity
W.B. Yeat’s “The Second Coming”
Chopin’s Nocturnes
Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time
Peter Pan
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm
The Cat in the Hat
Charlie Brown
Schindler’s List, E.T., and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Google
Harry Potter
The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement
"— from Susan Cain’s Quiet
We did not want any one thing that night when we called you. Just for you to pick up when we called. Just for you to answer. Just for the feel of your skin through the thin wet fabric of your shirt, washed too many times in unfamiliar laundromats with stolen quarters. Hurts to talk. A voice crawls from the back of the throat, back of the mirror. Stolen currency. Scratched CDs on the floor of my car. Trying to find a song that has been stuck in my head for for weeks, but you never wrote down any of the names for me. I remember all of the words, but none of the track numbers. None of the identifiers. None.
Stay awake for me.
stop thinking about what used to be and think about now.
your feet are planted
—cemented, even
when you see it fly overhead and realize
you have been standing stillÂ
far too long.
and now it is time to move.
it’s all right.


