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" I got sober at 27 and started writing around 30 and started playing music in public around 32, 33. "

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" Fundamentally, our job as songwriters is to sit down and listen. "

" I feel as though I came to music with something to say. It wasn't like that when I was younger. I didn't have the ability to articulate what it was I wanted to say. "

" I don't really write for catharsis; I get that kind of work done in therapy. "

" I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time. "

" What matters is what happens in the soul of an artist when you're playing. "

" Art, when done well, creates empathy. "

" I haven't been in the military, but I've known my share of pain. It allows me to sit with someone who's struggling and not be afraid. "

" What I was told is that I was born to a mother who was a Catholic, while her boyfriend was not. They couldn't get married unless they put me up for adoption. "

" 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. "

" I always knew I was going to make a record called 'The Foundling.' Since I picked up a guitar, I knew it. "

" I'm openly gay, and I've got a major label record deal in Nashville, and it happened when I was 42 years old. It's not supposed to happen that way. "

" I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool. "

" Songs have been my greatest teachers and continue to be really important in my life. "

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

" I felt my whole life like I didn't have a family, and I needed one. So I had to build one, and you build one with faith, hope, and the healing power of love - or you end up the 'Unabomber.' That's the choice. "

" If somebody in a family is in service, the whole family is in service. I didn't know that. I didn't know our veterans were being deployed seven, eight, nine, 10 times. It's inhumane. "

" When you see validation for a life's work and dedication, it's a beautiful day. "

" I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth. "

" 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. "

" Soldiers are trained not to be vulnerable, but when they come home, they've got to learn it. "

" Creating something beautiful out of pain helps ease the pain. So, that's kind of how I got to songwriting - quite honestly out of desperation. "

" 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. "

" A lot of time, if you spend too much time in Nashville, songwriters get caught up in charts and numbers and the music business politics. "

" I got interviewed by one writer who started with the line, 'Mary Gauthier is a woman who clearly doesn't care how she looks.' I do too. It's just that I'm not very good at it. "

" I love SongwritingWith:Soldiers. "

" Songs, especially lyrics, have always been really important to me. "

" 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 play everything I write. I mean, everything I write is not that good. I bring out into the world the ones I think that are really worthy of an audience's attention. "

" There's such a thing as a tribe - and family of choice. "

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