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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" I don't know who my dad is. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "