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" In my early years, I couldn't find a community. I couldn't find anybody like me. I felt so isolated. There was nothing but shame and loneliness. "

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" 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 would make a terrible soldier, because I don't follow orders. "

" When I finally got sober, I moved towards what I might have been if I hadn't been destroying myself when I was young. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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've always been drawn to the hard story, the trauma, because I think art can turn it around. "

" A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway. "

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

" 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. "

" What I really like is this salted calamari - with jalapenos on top. "

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

" 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 think, because of the kind of writer I am, I can't do it halfway. I can't do it without dedicating my entire life to it. I have to give it a hundred percent. "

" It is a form of arrogance to assume that other people are even thinking about you. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "