Anne Lamott

b. 1954 · American novelist & essayist

Anne Lamott (born 1954) is an American writer known for candid, faith-inflected nonfiction including Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, and Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. She made “help is the sunny side of control” famous through her 2017 TED Talk and her books — but, as Quote Investigator notes, she was the saying’s popularizer, not its author. The wording is older and anonymous.

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“Help is the sunny side of control”

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