James Chororos

17 Quotes Only Introverts Will Deeply Understand

Introverts have different minds, different hearts. Here are some quotes that only those rare, kindred souls, can relate to.
Bianca Sparacino
July 20, 2016
“The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person's solitude.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Tagged: Introvert
“Introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly.”
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“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 pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.

Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.”
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Tagged: Introvert
“We can't underestimate the value of silence. We need to create ourselves, need to spend time alone. If you don't, you risk not knowing yourself and not realizing your dreams.”
— Jewel
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Tagged: Introvert
“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”
— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.”
— Albert Camus, The Fall
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“Beware of those that seek constant crowds. They are nothing alone.’”
— Charles Bukowski, The Genius Of The Crows
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but steal some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.’”
— Albert Camus, Notebooks: 1951 - 1959
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“Oh the torture of never being left alone! I find it impossible to disentangle myself from those instincts, affections, passions, attachments…which bound me…from the first moment of consciousness to other people. I need solitude; I need to feel I belong to myself.’”
— Virginia Woolf, Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897 - 1909
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you.”
— Bjork, Björk
Tagged: Introvert
“We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence an intolerable uneasiness.’”
— Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.”
— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
Tagged: Introvert
“When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping.”
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)
Tagged: Introvert
“I can't think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there's no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
— Franz Kafka, The Castle
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“We shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway
Tagged: An Introverted Mind
“I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world, over time, little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved.”
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
Tagged: Introvert