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

“He loves to help his friends with their problems—that’s his thing, it’s his gift. And if he wants to help you, and you let him help, it seals the deal.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“You aren’t stupid, darling,” he sighed. “And I don’t think you’re crazy. I think maybe you just trust and love people extremely easily and that gets you into trouble sometimes.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“My phone buzzed with a text. It was from Anthony. I looked at him. He ignored me. I read the text. It said, “If you love people enough, they’ll give you everything.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Sometimes it was like Neil was from an alien planet where people never asked for or shared anything emotional without deeply apologising first. He assured me that he was simply British and that we Americans with all of our loud, oversharing and need for random hugs and free admissions to people we just met of deep, traumatic childhood wounds, looks just as alien to them.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“I’m often asked, “How can you trust people so much?”
Because that’s the only way it works. 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.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Eat the pain. Send it back to the void as love.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“What does one get Neil Gaiman, celebrated writer of fantasy and science fiction novels? A special pen? A fancy journal? A fossil of a tyrannosaurus Rex tooth? A map of the black hole? The bride. That was perfect.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Everybody struggles with asking. From what I’ve seen, it isn’t so much the act of asking that paralyses 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

“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.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“The art of asking can be learned, studied, perfected. The masters of asking, like the masters of painting and music, know that the field of asking is fundamentally improvisational. It thrives not in the creation of rules and etiquette but in the smashing of that etiquette.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Asking is an act of intimacy and trust. Begging is a function of fear, desperation, or weakness. Those who must beg demand our help; those who ask have faith in our capacity for love and in our desire to share with one another.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“This is exactly what I learned standing on the box, then while playing in bars in my first band, and, later, when I turned to crowdfunding. It was essential to feel thankful for the few who stopped to watch or listen, instead of wasting energy on resenting the majority who passed me by.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“That’s the whole point, darling, he said. Writers make things up.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“I boarded the plane and kept writing, unable to stop. the ink flowing to the blank pages to the book were my lifeline. My IV, my only escape from collapsing. In that moment I understood something about my writer husband, that i had never understood before: i had a small glimpse on the act of writing something down as a direct, very viable escape from pain. I had no desire to publish this writing, I wasn´t thinking about an audience. I just needed to do it. Or else I´d weep and not being able to stop weeping. For the first time I experienced the physical truth of what was it like to dwell in the act of creation as an escape hatch from an unbearable reality.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“My PMS can be brutal: I transform from a pretty reasonable person into a black hole of doubt, despair, and existentially flailing Muppet arms.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Taking the donuts is hard for a lot of people. It’s not the act of taking that’s so difficult, it’s more the fear of what other people are going to think when they see us slaving away at our manuscript about the pure transcendence of nature and the importance of self-reliance and simplicity. While munching on someone else’s donut.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“I wanted to be vulnerable. Not as a character, but as myself.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“The surgeon knows that her work is creative work. A machine can’t do it because it requires human delicacy and decision making. It can’t be done by an automaton because it requires critical thinking and a good dose of winging-it-ness. Her work requires a balance of self-confidence and collaboration, a blend of intuition and improvisation. If the surgeon, while slicing that vulnerable brain, hits an unexpected bump in the process and needs to ask the person beside her for something essential—and quickly—she has absolutely no time to waste on questions like: Do I deserve to ask for this help? Is this person I’m asking really trustworthy? Am I an asshole for having the power to ask in this moment? She simply accepts her position, asks without shame, gets the right scalpel, and keeps cutting. Something larger is at stake. This holds true for firefighters, airline pilots, and lifeguards, but it also holds true for artists, scientists, teachers—for anyone, in any relationship. 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

“Everybody out there is winging it to some degree, of this we can be pretty sure. In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: 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

“Feeling gratitude was a skill I honed on the street and dragged along with me into the music industry. I never aimed to please everyone who walked by, or everyone listening to the radio. All I needed was…some people. Enough people. Enough to make it worth coming back the next day, enough people to help me make rent and put food on the table. Enough so I could keep making art.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“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

“The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust. Distance”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Todos estamos rotos de una manera u otra y sólo intentamos recomponernos.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Los fans me dieron ese regalo, de forma muy directa. No era un enemigo imaginario que me medía y que juzgaba mi peso, mi piel, mis tetas o mi capacidad para parecer perfecta. No les importaba que aspecto tenía el envase que contenía la música -yo- mientras todos nos hiciéramos felices y nos cuidáramos os entre nosotros.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“A la gente no se le puede dar lo que quiere, pero se le puede dar otra cosa."
"Ah."
"Se le puede dar compresión. (...)”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Dar sin miedo ya es bastante difícil, pero todavía más difícil recibir sin miedo.
Sin embargo, lo más difícil está en ese intercambio.
Pedir. Sin vergüenza.
Y aceptar la ayuda que nos ofrecen.
No forzarlos.
Sino dejarles.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Los que piden sin miedo aprender a decir dos cosas, con o sin palabras, a los que tiene delante:
"Tengo derecho a pedir" y "Puedes decir que no". Y es que la petición con condiciones no puede ser un regalo.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Sin embargo, creo que cuando realmente nos vemos unos a otros, queremos ayudarnos.
Los seres humanos somos esencialmente generosos, pero nuestro instinto se va atrofiando.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“(...) la gente se siente cómoda mientras haya dinero fluyendo en ALGUNA dirección, ya sea del artista al voluntario o del voluntario al artista. A la gente no le resulta extraña una etiqueta con un precio, sea el objeto sobre el que se coloca. Sin embargo, algunos no consiguen entender el intercambio más complicado que se produce entre el pedir y el dar o, dicho de otro modo, el regalo en perpetuo movimiento.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“Si quieres lo bastante a la gente, ellos te lo darán todo.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help