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

Mary Gauthier

Got

Been

Finally

" 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. "

Mary Gauthier

You

Time

" When I became a songwriter, it was out of some sort of desperation. I needed to create something. I had to latch on to something, and the guitar was what I grabbed. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

" They send women into combat without being prepared for women in combat. The men resented them being there, and it was just very, very difficult for them, and they had to fight for the respect they were earning. And that's all they want is the respect. "

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

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

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" Songs bring us into connection with each other. When they resonate, when we're in resonance, singing together, we become one for that 3 1/2 or four minutes the song lasts. It takes away that isolated loneliness that modern life is so full of. "

Mary Gauthier

Together

Life

" 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. "

" I'm from New Orleans, and I have a French last name - although I have no real relationship with my last name because it's not my name. I don't know my name. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Mary Gauthier

Silent

Feel

" I don't have the experience of being in a war. "

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

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

Mary Gauthier

Just

Much

" 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. "

Mary Gauthier

Her

Mother

" 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. "