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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them. "

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

" A lot of times, a bunch of songs have to be written to get to the next really good one. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" When I first got sober, I hadn't read anything for six or seven years. I didn't have even that much focus. "

" I've learned our soldiers are so much like everybody else. They're just put into an extreme situation. "

" 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. "