Susan Cain Quotes

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.

There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.

Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

I needed the time to go to college and spend years with people who aren't in the business and become a person on my own in order to be the person that I am and the performer that I am. I wouldn't give that up to be in blockbusters or have more money.

Identity for me is something that has to be played with and explored, and not become complacent about or uninterested in.

One thing I'm interested in is what shapes us: the people? The place where we live? It's both of those and more. That's what I keep coming back to.

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.

You don't become a fully-formed human as a female, or even a male, until you're at least 30.

In my early twenties, I had no idea who I was. And I think that's one reason you should try different relationships. I've had good and bad ones, but I took away things from them that helped me become who I am.

The most formative time of our lives are the years between birth and age 21, when we explore who we are and learn from those who surround us.

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers.

Until your mid-twenties, you're still growing up mentally. It's fair to say there's a bigger difference between twenty and twenty-five than between twenty-five and forty in terms of who you are, how you relate to your work, and what you want out of it.

As you get older, you realise that your identity becomes more important - the environment in which you have grown is actually part of who you are just as much as your family or your school.

I talk about past relationships in my book, all of which I would never regret, as they played huge parts in who I am today.

Undergrad, for me, in college was really about, you know, how do I become a professional. But business school, for me, was how do I become the person that I'm meant to be.

It's taken me a long time to own the early part of my life.

The shadow is not a problem to be solved or an enemy to be conquered, but a fertile field to be cultivated. When we dig our hands into its rich soil we will discover the potent seeds of the people we most desire to be.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. One can judge objectively to what extent a person has succeeded in his task, to what degree he has realized his potentialities. If he has failed in his task, one can recognize this failure and judge it for what it is - a moral failure.

It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.

I feel that adolescence has served its purpose when a person arrives at adulthood with a strong sense of self-esteem, the ability to relate intimately, to communicate congruently, to take responsibility, and to take risks. The end of adolescence is the beginning of adulthood. What hasn't been finished then will have to be finished later.

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'

In my 20s because I was working on films so much and travelling so much and doing press, I was single with no kids and I think that's the time when not only are you trying on looks, but you're trying on personalities - you're still really forming.

What drew me to Batman in the first place was Bruce Wayne's story, and that he's a real character whose story begins in childhood. He's not a fully formed character like James Bond, so what we're doing is following the journey of this guy from a child who goes through this horrible experience of becoming this extraordinary character. That, for me, became a three-part story. And obviously the third part becomes the ending of the guy's story.