Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme...If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.

Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them.

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

Solitude is one of our great superpowers... Solitude is the key to being able to make effective decisions and then having the courage of convictions to stand behind those decisions.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.

A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.

Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.