Quotes from Mary Gauthier

I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth.

I came to music and knowing a little bit about life, and I came to music knowing a lot about business - and that's a real advantage. By the time I came to music, I had purchased real estate, opened restaurants, and been in the business world, so the music business didn't blindside me.

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 if people really listened to what our families who serve go through, we could have a realistic discussion of what it means to send young people to war.

When you see validation for a life's work and dedication, it's a beautiful day.

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 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 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.

I think music is the highest form of healing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I'm a traveler and a vagabond and an observer, and the songs come through that. And that's just the way it's going to be.

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

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.

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.

Music and books, I think, were the two things I trusted the most as a child - songs and books.