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" I got issues. Boy, have I got issues. "

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" The job of the artist is to go to the places where most other people are embarrassed to go to. And show it. "

" I'm grateful to songwriting and recovery to bringing me to a place of peace. "

" I think if people really listened to what our families who serve go through, we could have a realistic discussion of what it means to send young people to war. "

" I think I'll always draw from being a person that doesn't know how to have a normal life, whatever a normal life is. "

" I think each veteran's soul has something that it needs to say. I know from my own personal traumas, it's very hard to know what that is. But when I'm watching someone else struggle, it's not as confusing for me, 'cause it's not my struggle, so I can help identify that. "

" I'm from New Orleans, and I have a French last name - although I have no real relationship with my last name because it's not my name. I don't know my name. "

" I don't have the experience of being in a war. "

" If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree. "

" People in Ireland take in the whole song. After a long history of great singers and songwriters and poets, they are able to consume the entire song - not just the external; they go inside. "

" People who have been through trauma, their souls are hurting. "

" A lot of times, a bunch of songs have to be written to get to the next really good one. "

" A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them. "

" Art, when done well, creates empathy. "

" If I write for beauty and truth, the songs will find their way to me. Then, it's the songs that speak to the audience, and they can become part of the tribe that is into what I do. "

" The world doesn't need any more pretty good songs. "

" I think it's a stereotype that soldiers don't talk, because my experience is that they will talk if they are met with empathy and no judgment. "

" I was in the orphanage in New Orleans until I was almost a year old. I don't think I ever got held by my mama, so that was completely and utterly traumatic. I think it was trauma from the first breath, and I think I've spent my whole life trying to heal from that trauma. So it shaped my brain. "

" It can take me many months to write one of my own songs. "

" Melody's like tweezers that go into the infection and pull out the wounded part. You can almost not stay silent in the face of a melody that matches your emotion. You feel seen. "

" I write to make some sense of things that confuse me. The mechanics of my own heart are the most confusing I know about - and don't know about - and other people's are a bit confusing, too. "

" I've got lots of problems. Being gay isn't one of them. "

" I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat. "

" By the time I got to songwriting, I had been faced with a lot of troubles as a result of my own collective of trauma. I was someone who instinctively figured out that writing songs about the struggle helps you with the struggle. "

" I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song. "

" They send women into combat without being prepared for women in combat. The men resented them being there, and it was just very, very difficult for them, and they had to fight for the respect they were earning. And that's all they want is the respect. "

" I don't ever want to tie a song in a little bow. Life doesn't work that way, and war doesn't ever work that way. "

" Music had always been a kind of anchor for me. But I didn't write my first song till I was 35. "

" We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is. "

" Songs are here to help us: they build bridges from heart to heart. "

" I knew I had that Cajun heritage, that Acadian heritage; I just feel it. And my gut says Irish on the other side. Irish and French, that's what I feel. When you're young, it doesn't matter so much, but as you get older, I would suspect part of the ageing process is to wonder about your ancestors - who were they? What were their lives like? "