“Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. Theyre associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.”

“Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured...Spend your free the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.”

“What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achieve...”

“Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the p...”

“Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies t...”

“It's not that there is no small talk...It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end...Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. ...”

“We have conversations with each other most nights - Sylvia Plath and me!”

“And we will lie down on the ground and have conversations with the grasses and the flowers.”

“Dandelions represent the easy way. You pick up a dandelion and it's so soft, and it's so easy and even fun sometimes to blow the seeds everywhere. And you don't even realize what you're doing. Noth...”

“Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didnt want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didnt feel so good today.”

“I've never minded it," he went on. "Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not truly be lost if one knew one's own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

“If you want to be happy, work with all your heart.”

“I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.”

“I feel like Ive been split open and stuffed with sunshine.”