Quotes from Mary Gauthier

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.

There's such a thing as a tribe – and family of choice.

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.

Ultimately, what I want is for my songs to outlive me: I want my songs to keep being played even after I'm gone.

There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike.

I haven't been in the military, but I've known my share of pain. It allows me to sit with someone who's struggling and not be afraid.

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

I feel as though I came to music with something to say. It wasn't like that when I was younger. I didn't have the ability to articulate what it was I wanted to say.

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.

I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time.

I keep seeing the headline on articles that says something like 'Mary Gauthier Helping Our Veterans.' It's troubling - and it's condescending. Whatever I'm doing as a songwriter to help them tell their stories, they're giving it back to me double, triple, quadruple.

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.

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

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

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