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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" Once I got my life sorted and started to get healthy, then I was able to focus on writing. "

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

" There's an ocean of misunderstanding. It's called the civilian-military divide. I had a lot to learn about our military - who they are, what burdens they carry. "

Misunderstanding

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

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

" 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. "

" Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose. "

" Art, when done well, creates empathy. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't really write for catharsis; I get that kind of work done in therapy. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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