Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I keep seeing the headline on articles that says something like 'Mary Gauthier Helping Our Veterans.' It's troubling - and it's condescending. Whatever I'm doing as a songwriter to help them tell their stories, they're giving it back to me double, triple, quadruple. "

Related Quotes:

" What I'm finding is there's an awful lot about adoption and relinquishment and the complicated nature of family that we, as human beings, haven't been able to have a real discussion about yet without a lot of censorship. "

Mary Gauthier

Finding

Family

Censorship

" I long for real and true connection. It has been the theme of all the songs in my whole life. "

" I try not to eat cakes, but sugar screams my name. "

" Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose. "

Mary Gauthier

Songwriting

Purpose

" I did not know that if a member of a family serves, the whole family serves. I did not know that the spouses of our service members carry such a heavy load. "

" I think music is the highest form of healing. "

" 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? "

" I'm a big fan of Lou Reed, and I do a lot of talking through songs. It's more effective with my vocal limitations and also more powerful to slightly sing sometimes. It depends on the emotion, but I'm never going to try to compete with great singers. "

" I love SongwritingWith:Soldiers. "

Mary Gauthier

Love

I Love

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

" Being in recovery for a lot of years now, I've worked with a lot of people who've gotten sober and sat with a lot of folks who are suffering. Bearing witness is a really underrated thing; it's a big damn deal. "

" I spent my 18th birthday in jail. Charges were dropped as long as I promised never to return to the state of Kansas. My parents took me home to Louisiana. I lasted there a week. Then I ran away. "

Mary Gauthier

Long

Parents

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

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

" Ultimately, what I want is for my songs to outlive me: I want my songs to keep being played even after I'm gone. "

Mary Gauthier

Gone

Even

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

Mary Gauthier

Job

Artist

" I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That's why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting. "

" I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably be in therapy all of my life. "

" My experience is that the universal is the personal. If you can get past your navel-gazing into the deepest part of yourself as a writer, you find everyone - we're all there. "

" I have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams. "

" I did not know that the wounds of war are often invisible. "

" War is hell. Sending young people to conflicts that are unwinnable and unresolvable - it puts them in a position where they're going to suffer. And yet their experience is that they're proud of their service, and they should be. Service freely rendered is a noble thing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness. "

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

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

" 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. "

Mary Gauthier

Afraid

Someone