Quiet (46 page)

But what he loved to do best was read. In his small apartment, where as a widower he'd lived alone for decades, all the furniture had yielded its original function to serve as a surface for piles of books: gold-leafed Hebrew texts jumbled together with Margaret Atwood and Milan Kundera. My grandfather would sit beneath a halo-shaped fluorescent light at his tiny kitchen table, sipping Lipton tea and snacking on marble cake, a book propped open on the white cotton tablecloth. In his sermons, each a tapestry of ancient and humanist thought, he'd share with his congregation the fruits of that week's study. He was a shy person who had trouble making eye contact with the audience, but he was so bold in his spiritual and intellectual explorations that when he spoke the congregation swelled to standing-room-only.

The rest of my family took its cue from him. In our house, reading was the primary group activity. On Saturday afternoons we curled up with our books in the den. It was the best of both worlds: you had the
animal warmth of your family right next to you, but you also got to roam around the adventure-land inside your own head.

Yet as a preteen I began to wonder whether all this reading had marked me as “out of it,” a suspicion that seemed confirmed when I went away to summer camp at the age of ten and watched as a girl with thick glasses and a high forehead refused to put down her book on the all-important first day of camp and instantly became a pariah, her days and nights a hell of social exclusion. I longed to read, too, but left my own paperbacks untouched in my suitcase (though I felt guilty about this, as if the books needed me and I was forsaking them). I saw that the girl who kept reading was considered bookish and shy, the very things that I was, too, and knew that I must hide.

After that summer, I felt less comfortable about my desire to be alone with a book. In high school, in college, and as a young lawyer, I tried to make myself appear more extroverted and less eggheady than I truly was.

But as I grew older, I drew inspiration from my grandfather's example. He was a quiet man, and a great one. When he died at the age of ninety-four, after sixty-two years at the pulpit, the NYPD had to close the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the throngs of mourners. He would have been surprised to know this. Today, I think that one of the best things about him was his humility.

This book is dedicated, with love, to my childhood family. To my mother, with her endless enthusiasm for quiet kitchen-table chats; she gave us children the gift of intimacy. I was so lucky to have such a devoted mother. To my father, a dedicated physician who taught by example the joys of sitting for hours at a desk, hunting for knowledge, but who also came up for air to introduce me to his favorite poems and science experiments. To my brother and sister, who share to this day the warmth and affection of having grown up in our small family and household full of literature. To my grandmother, for her pluck, grit, and caring.

And in memory of my grandfather, who spoke so eloquently the language of quiet.

This book is about introversion as seen from a
cultural
point of view. Its primary concern is the age-old dichotomy between the “man of action” and the “man of contemplation,” and how we could improve the world if only there were a greater balance of power between the two types. It focuses on the person who recognizes him- or herself somewhere in the following constellation of attributes: reflective, cerebral, bookish, unassuming, sensitive, thoughtful, serious, contemplative, subtle, introspective, inner-directed, gentle, calm, modest, solitude-seeking, shy, risk-averse, thin-skinned.
Quiet
is also about this person's opposite number: the “man of action” who is ebullient, expansive, sociable, gregarious, excitable, dominant, assertive, active, risk-taking, thick-skinned, outer-directed, lighthearted, bold, and comfortable in the spotlight.

These are broad categories, of course. Few individuals identify fully with only one or the other. But most of us recognize these types immediately, because they play meaningful roles in our culture.

Contemporary personality psychologists may have a conception of introversion and extroversion that differs from the one I use in this book. Adherents of the Big Five taxonomy often view such characteristics as the tendency to have a cerebral nature, a rich inner life, a strong conscience, some degree of anxiety (especially shyness), and a risk-averse nature as belonging to categories quite separate from introversion. To them, these traits may fall under “openness to experience,” “conscientiousness,” and “neuroticism.”

My use of the word
introvert
is deliberately broader, drawing on the insights of Big Five psychology, but also encompassing Jungian thinking
on the introvert's inner world of “inexhaustible charm” and subjective experience; Jerome Kagan's research on high reactivity and anxiety (see
chapters 4
and
5
); Elaine Aron's work on sensory processing sensitivity and its relationship to conscientiousness, intense feeling, inner-directedness, and depth of processing (see
chapter 6
); and various research on the persistence and concentration that introverts bring to problem-solving, much of it summarized wonderfully in Gerald Matthews's work (see
chapter 7
).

Indeed, for over three thousand years, Western culture has linked the qualities in the above constellations of adjectives. As
the anthropologist C. A. Valentine once wrote:

Valentine's concept of introversion includes traits that contemporary psychology would classify as openness to experience (“thinker, dreamer”), conscientiousness (“idealist”), and neuroticism (“shy individual”).

A long line of poets, scientists, and philosophers have also tended to group these traits together. All the way back in Genesis, the earliest book of the Bible, we had cerebral Jacob (a “quiet man dwelling in tents” who later becomes “Israel,” meaning one who wrestles inwardly with God) squaring off in sibling rivalry with his brother, the swashbuckling Esau (a “skillful hunter” and “man of the field”). In classical antiquity, the physicians Hippocrates and Galen famously proposed that our temperaments—and destinies—were a function of our bodily fluids, with extra blood and “yellow bile” making us sanguine or choleric (stable or neurotic extroversion), and an excess of phlegm and “black bile” making us calm or melancholic (stable or neurotic introversion).
Aristotle noted that the melancholic temperament was associated with eminence in philosophy, poetry, and the arts (today we might classify this as openness
to experience). The seventeenth-century English poet
John Milton wrote
Il Penseroso
(“The Thinker”) and
L'Allegro
(“The Merry One”), comparing “the happy person” who frolics in the countryside and revels in the city with “the thoughtful person” who walks meditatively through the nighttime woods and studies in a “lonely Towr.” (Again, today the description of
Il Penseroso
would apply not only to introversion but also to openness to experience and neuroticism.) The nineteenth-century German philosopher
Schopenhauer contrasted “good-spirited” people (energetic, active, and easily bored) with his preferred type, “intelligent people” (sensitive, imaginative, and melancholic). “Mark this well, ye proud men of action!” declared his countryman Heinrich Heine. “Ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”

Because of this definitional complexity, I originally planned to invent my own terms for these constellations of traits. I decided against this, again for cultural reasons: the words
introvert
and
extrovert
have the advantage of being well known and highly evocative. Every time I uttered them at a dinner party or to a seatmate on an airplane, they elicited a torrent of confessions and reflections. For similar reasons, I've used the layperson's spelling of
extrovert
rather than the
extravert
one finds throughout the research literature.

I could not have written
Quiet
without the help of countless friends, family members, and colleagues, including: Richard Pine, otherwise known (to me) as Super-Agent RSP: the smartest, savviest, and menschiest literary agent that any writer could hope to work with. Richard believed unswervingly in
Quiet
, even before I did. Then he kept on believing, all the way through the five years it took me to research and write it. I consider him not only an agent but a partner in my career. I also enjoyed working with the whole team at InkWell Management, including Ethan Bassoff, Lyndsey Blessing, and Charlie Olsen.

At Crown Publishers, it has been my privilege to work with the remarkable Molly Stern and her all-star team. Rachel Klayman has got to be the most brilliant and dedicated editor in the business. She has been there at two in the afternoon and at two in the morning, spotting flaws in my reasoning and clunkers in my prose, and championing this book indefatigably. I also appreciate how generous Mary Choteborsky and Jenna Ciongoli were with their editorial talents. And I was fortunate to work with outside editor Peter Guzzardi, who has terrific instincts and a knack for making criticism sound delightful. My heartfelt thanks to all of you. This book would be a shadow of itself without your efforts.

Special thanks too to Rachel Rokicki and Julie Cepler for the creativity and enthusiasm they brought to the
Quiet
cause. And thanks to Patty Berg, Mark Birkey, Chris Brand, Stephanie Chan, Tina Constable, Laura Duffy, Songhee Kim, Kyle Kolker, Rachel Meier, Annsley Rosner, and everyone else on the team at Crown.

I have also been very lucky to work with Joel Rickett, Kate Barker, and the rest of the crackerjack group at Viking/Penguin U.K.

The marvelous people at TED embraced the ideas in this book and offered me a chance to talk about them at the TED Long Beach conference in 2012. I am grateful to Chris Anderson, Kelly Stoetzel, June Cohen, Tom Rielly, Michael Glass, Nicholas Weinberg, and the entire TED team.

Brian Little, whose work I profiled in
chapter 9
, has become an extraordinary mentor and friend. I met Brian early in my research process, when I asked for an interview. He gave me not only the interview but also, over the years, my own personal graduate seminar in personality psychology. I am proud to be one of his many disciples and friends.

Elaine Aron, whose research I profiled in
chapter 6
, inspired me with her life's work and gave generously of her time, knowledge, and life story.

I relied on the support and advice of innumerable friends, including: Marci Alboher, Gina Bianchini, Tara Bracco, Janis Brody, Greg Bylinksy, David Callahan, Helen Churko, Mark Colodny, Estie Dallett, Ben Dattner, Ben Falchuk, Christy Fletcher, Margo Flug, Jennifer Gandin Le, Rhonda Garelick, Michael Glass, Vishwa Goohya, Leeat Granek, Amy Gutman, Hillary Hazan-Glass, Wende Jaeger-Hyman, Mahima Joishy, Emily Klein, Chris Le, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, Lori Lesser, Margot Magowan, Courtney Martin, Fran and Jerry Marton, Furaha Norton, Elizabeth O'Neill, Wendy Paris, Leanne Paluck Reiss, Marta Renzi, Gina Rudan, Howard Sackstein, Marisol Simard, Daphna Stern, Robin Stern, Tim Stock, Jillian Straus, Sam Sugiura, Tom Sugiura, Jennifer Taub, Kate Tedesco, Ruti Teitel, Seinenu Thein, Jacquette Timmons, Marie Lena Tupot, Sam Walker, Daniel Wolff, and Cali Yost. A special, super-duper thanks to Anna Beltran, Maritza Flores, and Eliza Simpson.

I am especially grateful for the forbearance of some of my oldest and dearest friends: Mark Colodny, Jeff Kaplan, Hitomi Komatsu, Cathy Lankenau-Weeks, Lawrence Mendenhall, Jonathan Sichel, Brande Stellings, Judith van der Reis, Rebecca and Jeremy Wallace-Segall, and Naomi Wolf, who remain close even though we barely had time to talk, let alone visit, during the years I wrote this book and gave birth to my two children.

Thank you, too, to my fellow members of the Invisible Institute,
who inspire and astonish me on a regular basis: Gary Bass, Elizabeth Devita-Raeburn, Abby Ellin, Randi Epstein, Sheri Fink, Christine Kenneally, Judith Matloff, Katie Orenstein, Annie Murphy Paul, Pamela Paul, Joshua Prager, Alissa Quart, Paul Raeburn, Kathy Rich, Gretchen Rubin, Lauren Sandler, Deborah Siegel, Rebecca Skloot, Debbie Stier, Stacy Sullivan, Maia Szalavitz, Harriet Washington, and Tom Zoellner.

For inspiration that I would bottle and sell if I could, I thank the owners of the cottage in Amagansett: Alison (Sunny) Warriner and Jeanne Mclemore. The same goes for Evelyn and Michael Polesny, proprietors of the magical Doma Café in Greenwich Village, where I wrote most of this book.

Thanks also to those who helped with various aspects of getting
Quiet
off the ground: Nancy Ancowitz, Mark Colodny, Bill Cunningham, Ben Dattner, Aaron Fedor, Boris Fishman, David Gallo, Christopher Glazek, Suzy Hansen, Jayme Johnson, Jennifer Kahweiler, David Lavin, Ko-Shin Mandell, Andres Richner, JillEllyn Riley, Gretchen Rubin, Gregory Samanez-Larkin, Stephen Schueller, Sree Sreenivasan, Robert Stelmack, Linda Stone, John Thompson, Charles Yao, Helen Wan, Georgia Weinberg, and Naomi Wolf.

I owe a special debt to the people I wrote about or quoted, some of whom have become friends: Michel Anteby, Jay Belsky, Jon Berghoff, Wayne Cascio, Hung Wei Chien, Boykin Curry, Tom DeMarco, Richard Depue, Dr. Janice Dorn, Anders Ericsson, Jason Fried, Francesca Gino, Adam Grant, William Graziano, Stephen Harvill, David Hofmann, Richard Howard, Jadzia Jagiellowicz, Roger Johnson, Jerry Kagan, Guy Kawasaki, Camelia Kuhnen, Tiffany Liao, Richard Lippa, Joanna Lipper, Adam McHugh, Mike Mika, Emily Miller, Jerry Miller, Quinn Mills, Purvi Modi, Joseph Newman, Preston Ni, Carl Schwartz, Dave Smith, Mark Snyder, Jacqueline Strickland, Avril Thorne, David Weiss, Mike Wei, and Shoya Zichy.