“I’ve always been an interior sort. That is, I’m used to looking at the world as a somewhat misinformed observer—curious but unsure, preferring to look through a window rather than walk through a door. That has given me a lot of time to think about how the world gets stitched together, and to examine and poke at the structures beneath the spectacle.”
Martin Venezky
more infosource: Sean Adams interviews Martin Venezky, Step magazine
category: introvert, personality, world view
medium: Interview
“Nothing can be done without solitude. I’ve created my own solitude which nobody suspects. It’s very difficult nowadays to be alone because we all own watches. Have you even seen a saint with a watch? Yet, I’ve looked everywhere for one even amidst the saints known as patrons of the watchmakers.”
Pablo Picasso
more infosource: Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, ed. by Dore Ashton (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 84.
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category: creative process, introvert, painter, solitude, time
medium: Nonfiction
“Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.”
Cheryl Strayed
more infosource: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 119.
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category: alone, introvert, solitude
medium: Memoir
“The most surprising and fascinating thing I learned is that there are ‘introverts’ and ‘extroverts’ throughout the animal kingdom—all the way down to the level of fruit flies!”
Susan Cain
more infosource: “The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance,” interview with Gareth Cook, Scientific American, January 24, 2012.
category: extrovert, fruit fly, introvert, nature
medium: Interview
“I am the Merry Recluse.”
Caroline Knapp
more infosource: “The Merry Recluse: Solitude in the Culture of ‘WE,'” in The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays (New York: Counterpoint, 2004), 286.
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category: introvert, recluse, solitude
medium: Essay
“What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
more infosource: Gift from the Sea (New York: Pantheon, 2005), 50th anniversary ed., 43–44.
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medium: Nonfiction
“I really don’t like adults at all.”
Maurice Sendak
more infosource: “Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Part 1,” The Colbert Report, January 24, 2012; watch here (well worth it)
category: adult, introvert, socializing
medium: Interview
“I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.”
Henry David Thoreau
more infosource: “Solitude,” in Walden: or, Life in the Woods (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1899), 156.
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category: alone, introvert, solitude
medium: Nonfiction
“Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
more infosource: Gift from the Sea (New York: Pantheon, 2005), 50th anniversary ed., 44.
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category: alone, creativity, introvert, solitude
medium: Nonfiction
“Digital media is an amplifier. It tends to make extroverts more extroverted and introverts more introverted.”
Clay Shirky
more infosource: “Seeing Social Media More as Portal Than as Pitfall,” New York Times, by Perri Klass, January 9, 2012.
category: communication, extrovert, introvert, social media
medium: Newspaper article
“I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”
Philippe Starck
more infosource: on how he stays ahead of the curve, quoted in “The Joy of Quiet,” by Pico Iyer, New York Times, December 29, 2011.
category: introvert, nowhere, solitary
medium: Newspaper article
“You asked me to come and see you—I must speak of that. I thank you, A., but I don’t go from home, unless emergency leads me by the hand, and then I do it obstinately, and draw back if I can. Should I ever leave home, which is improbable, I will, with much delight, accept your invitation; till then, my dear A., my warmest thanks are yours, but don’t expect me.”
Emily Dickinson
more infosource: ca. July 26, 1853 letter to Abiah Root, in Letters: Emily Dickinson, selected and ed. by Emily Fragos (New York: Everyman’s Library, 2011), 116.
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category: introvert, socializing
medium: Letter
“I’m happier being outside the flow.”
Nicholson Baker
more infosource: “The Mad Scientist of Smut,” by Charles McGrath, The New York Times, August 4, 2011.
category: flow, happiness, introvert
medium: Newspaper profile
“All this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn’t think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.”
Margaret Atwood
more infosource: The Edible Woman (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999), 112.
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category: communication, confession, introvert, socializing, talk
medium: Fiction
“I cannot get enough alone to write a letter to a friend. I retreat & hide. I left the city, I hid myself in the pastures. When I bought a house, the first thing I did was to plant trees. I could not conceal myself enough. Set a hedge here, set pines there, trees & trees, set evergreens, above all, for they will keep my secret all year round.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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