"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 pl… - Susan Cain

"Even though we can reach for the outer limits of our temperaments, it can often be better to situate ourselves squarely inside our comfort zones. . . .

Once you understand introversion and extroversion as preferences for certain levels of stimulation, you can begin consciously trying to situate yourself in environments favorable to your own personality — neither overstimulating nor understimulating, neither boring nor anxiety-making. You can organize your life in terms of what personality psychologists call "optimal levels of arousal" and what I call "sweet spots," and by doing so feel more energetic and alive than before."

There’s something about writing books that gives us the permission to discuss things that aren’t as easy to talk about in everyday life. To me, the whole point of writing books is to look at the unexamined, the unspeakable, and the unarticulated.

The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor; you could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again. Yet to fully inhabit these dualities — the dark as well as the light — is, paradoxically, the only way to transcend them. And transcending them is the ultimate point. The bittersweet is about the desire for communion, the wish to go home.