Susan Cain Quotes

I almost never give interviews. It's not because I want to play hard to get. It's just that I never seem to have anything interesting to say.

I think any branding for me is band-related. It's really weird to get used to the exposure, because I am a naturally introverted person, and I'm not exactly social. Occasionally I can get comfortable enough to talk, but I spend a lot of my days not talking, especially when I'm at home and not on tour.

I don't do much press. I don't like to talk about my music too much before I do it.

When I did have a little bit of commercial success, it really didn't suit my temperament at all. I'm a terrible public person.

Offscreen, I'm a private person. I'm shy and don't know how to face the public.

Our entire family is shy. Apart from film promotions, we do not believe in staying in the limelight.

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

I'm not a very public person.

I'm not the interview-giving kind.

I was a very quiet child, quite introverted, really. Independent, yes; I didn't need a lot of supervision. Less so than I did when I got older, maybe. But I was a bookish child, not surprisingly. I could sit quite happily in a corner for hours and entertain myself with books.

When I meet people I try to make a joke out of my occupation, explaining that what I do all day is sit alone in a darkened room, flicking through some pages, jumping on a treadmill now and then. I keep my serious work as a writer private, but that doesn't mean it's not serious work - quite the opposite.

And please God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I am writing for children, not golden stickers.

It's very hard, when you're a famous person, to "de-famous" your home, but tokens of my fame just felt like a burden for my children. And for me.

Little kids' minds are very, very strong. They bend. There's a lot of tensile strength and they don't break. We start our kids off on things like "Hansel and Gretel," which features child abandonment, kidnapping, attempted murder, forcible detention, cannibalism, and finally murder by cremation. And the kids love it.

If you are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer.

For hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that's-she did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop. And when the night was over and the white wine was over and the dancing was over, she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone. I saw her sitting quietly without expression on her face, and I walked towards her but I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.

Even though I have this solid career in picture books, I've not only been thinking about kids - because I don't think that much about children; I'm not a child educator; I'm just a former child.

I was brought up to question things, but I was always a really quiet and shy child.

People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

Dwight Eisenhower was candid in private, but he was circumspect in public.

I'm self-conscious in photo shoots. I much prefer to do interviews and talk about the work.

I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.

I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.

My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong.