The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help Quotes

“To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding.
To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of art. Theater, fiction, horror stories, love stories. This is what art does. Good or bad, it imagines the insides, the heart of the other, whether that heart is full of light or trapped in darkness.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Às vezes as pessoas se mostram inconfiáveis.
Quando isso acontece, a reação correta não é:
Porra! Eu sabia que não podia confiar em ninguém.
A reação correta é:
Tem uns que são uns bostas.
E segue em frente.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Everybody keeps talking about 'fighting' the cancer," he said, "everybody keeps telling me to fight for my life, to fight the disease, and how their uncle won the battle against cancer and their cousin won the fight against cancer and black blah blah blah."

"Okay...and?"

"I'm not fighting," he said. "It's already inside me... and I'm not going to fight. I'm going to be a good host, let it pass through me.. resist nothing. Sieve. Let it all pass through.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Those who ask without fear learn to say two things, with or without words, to those they are facing: I deserve to ask and You are welcome to say no. Because the ask that is conditional cannot be a gift.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Brené Brown writes: In a 2011 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers found that, as far as the brain is concerned, physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way…Neuroscience advances confirm what we’ve known all along: emotions can hurt and cause pain. And just as we often struggle to define physical pain, describing emotional pain is difficult. Shame is particularly hard because it hates having words wrapped around it. It hates being spoken.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“At the same yoga retreat, we stood and faced each other in pairs, really looking at each other from a close distance. We were told to simply BE with the other person, maintaining eye contact, with no social gestures like laughing, smiling, or winking to put ourselves at ease.

Grown women and men cried. Really and truly sobbed.

When we were finished with the exercise, we talked about how it had felt. The thread echoed again and again: many people had never felt so *seen* by another person. Seen without walls, without judgment....just seen, acknowledged, accepted. The experience was -- for so many painfully rare.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Those who can ask without shame are viewing themselves in collaboration with—rather than in competition with—the world. Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“When artists work well, they connect people to themselves, and they stitch people to one another, through this shared experience of discovering a connection that wasn’t visible before. Have you ever noticed that this looks like this? And with the same delight that we took as children in seeing a face in a cloud, grown-up artists draw the lines between the bigger dots of grown-up life: sex, love, vanity, violence, illness, death.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“I got a book deal, I told Neil grumpily. I’m going to write a book about the TED talk. And all the…other stuff I couldn’t fit into twelve minutes. He was writing at the kitchen table and looked up with delight. Of course you did. They’re paying me an actual advance, I said. I can pay you back now. That’s wonderful, my clever wife. I told you it would all work out. But I’ve never written a book. How could they pay me to write a book? I don’t know how to write a book. You’re the writer. You’re hopeless, my darling, he said. I glared at him. Just write the book, Amanda. Do what I do: finish your tour, go away somewhere, and write it all down in one sitting. They’ll get you an editor. You’re a songwriter. You blog. A book is just…longer. You’ll have fun. Fine, I’ll write it, I said, crossing my arms. And I’m putting EVERYTHING in it. And then everyone will know what an asshole I truly am for having a best-selling novelist husband who covered my ass while I waited for the check to clear while writing the ridiculous self-absorbed nonfiction book about how you should be able to take help from everybody. You realize you’re a walking contradiction, right? he asked. So? I contain multitudes. Can’t you just let me cling to my own misery? He looked at me. Sure, darling. If that’s what you want. I stood there, fuming. He sighed. I love you, miserable wife. Would you like to go out to dinner to maybe celebrate your book deal? NO! I DON’T WANT TO CELEBRATE. IT’S ALL MEANINGLESS! DON’T YOU SEE? I give up, he said, and walked out of the room. GOOD! I shouted after him. YOU SHOULD GIVE UP! THIS IS A HOPELESS FUCKING SITUATION! I AM A TOTALLY WORTHLESS FRAUD AND THIS BOOK DEAL PROVES IT. Darling, he called from the other room, are you maybe expecting your period? NO. MAYBE. I DON’T KNOW! DON’T EVEN FUCKING ASK ME THAT. GOD. Just checking, he said. I got my period a few days later. I really hate him sometimes.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“They all told me I had a fear of intimacy, but I vehemently disagreed; I craved intimacy like a crack addict.

The problem was that I craved intimacy to the same burning degree that I detested commitment.

Being a statue was such a perfect job.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“For real? I dropped my cell phone in a puddle this morning, couldn’t find my keys, can’t hold down a relationship, and here I am clutching a sharp knife about to cut someone’s head open. And they could die. Who is letting me do this? This is BULLSHIT.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“The field of asking is fundamentally improvisational. It thrives not in the creation of rules and etiquette but in the smashing of that etiquette.

Which is to say: there are no rules.
Or, rather, there are plenty of rules, but they ask, on bended knees, to be broken.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“When you examine the genesis of great works of art, successful start-ups, and revolutionary shifts in politics, you can always trace back a history of monetary and nonmonetary exchange, the hidden patrons and underlying favors.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“when you’re afraid of someone’s judgment, you can’t connect with them. You’re too preoccupied with the task of impressing them.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“it’s the closest thing I have to church.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“The professionals know they’re winging it. The amateurs pretend they’re not.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Chegamos ao ponto de, em vez de respeitar e reconhecer a coragem e a ousadia por trás da vulnerabilidade, deixar que nosso medo e nosso desconforto se convertam em juízo e crítica”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“When you accept somebody’s offer for help, whether it’s in the form of food, crash space, money, or love, you have to trust the help offered. You can’t accept things halfway and walk through the door with your guard up. When you openly, radically trust people, they not only take care of you, they become your allies, your family. Sometimes people will prove themselves untrustworthy. When that happens, the correct response is not: Fuck! I knew I couldn’t trust anybody! The correct response is: Some people just suck. Moving right along.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“When you’re an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy. You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand. And you feel stupid doing it. There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Our first job in life is to recognize the gifts we’ve already got, take the donuts that show up while we cultivate and use those gifts, and then turn around and share those gifts—sometimes in the form of money, sometimes time, sometimes love—back into the puzzle of the world. Our second job is to accept where we are in the puzzle at each moment.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Brené Brown has found through her research that women tend to feel shame around the idea of being “never enough”: at home, at work, in bed. Never pretty enough, never smart enough, never thin enough, never good enough. Men tend to feel shame around the fear of being “perceived as weak,” or more academically: fear of being called a pussy. Both sexes get trapped in the same box, for different reasons. If I ask for help, I am not enough. If I ask for help, I am weak. It’s no wonder so many of us just don’t bother to ask. It’s too painful.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“And I’ve already spent too much time Doing things I didn’t want to So if I want to drink alone dressed like a pirate Or look like a dyke Or wear high heels and lipstick Or hide in a convent Or try to be mayor Or marry a writer Smoke crack and slash tires Make jokes you don’t like Or paint ducks and retire You can bet your black ass that I’m going to. —from An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer, 2013”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“How do we create a world in which people don’t think of art just as a product, but as a relationship?”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

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Whatever we are given is supposed to be given away, not kept.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Often it is our own sense that we are undeserving of help that has immobilized us.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“From what I’ve seen, it isn’t so much the act of asking that paralyzes us—it’s what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“I hate it when people don’t spend the night.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“What’s important is that I absorb, listen, talk, connect, help, and share. Constantly.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Limitations can expand, rather than shrink, the creative flow.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help