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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" I love SongwritingWith:Soldiers. "

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

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

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

" I think having near-death experiences, they sure made me free. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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Gone

Even

" 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. "

" The belief when your mother gives you away is that there's something deeply wrong. Mothers don't give babies away. There's something wrong with me, something unlovable, something seriously flawed in me. It's a fundamental thing; it's precognitive. You feel it rather than think it. How could you not? "

" 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. "

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Silent

Feel

" 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. "

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Someone

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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You

Time

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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 guess I find it easier to talk when I have a guitar in front of me. "

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Find

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

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

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Here

" There's a lot of vulnerability in songs - I'm not talking about pop songs - from people that are in the art of songwriting more than the commercial enterprise of it. "

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Art

People

" What I've found at 48 years old is that there's nothing about me that's unique. "

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

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Learn

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

" 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. "