Quotes from Mary Gauthier

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'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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I always knew I was going to make a record called 'The Foundling.' Since I picked up a guitar, I knew it.

I think we're very much in a mystery here in this life and that artists try to pierce the mystery with their art.

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 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 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?

Art, when done well, creates empathy.

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

My experience is that the universal is the personal. If you can get past your navel-gazing into the deepest part of yourself as a writer, you find everyone - we're all there.

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.

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 have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.

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

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.

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.

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

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