Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Mary Gauthier
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Mary Gauthier.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Songs are here to help us: they build bridges from heart to heart.
I don't know who my dad is.
In a lot of ways, songwriting helped save my life.
A lot of times, a bunch of songs have to be written to get to the next really good one.
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 think having near-death experiences, they sure made me free.
I've always been drawn to the hard story, the trauma, because I think art can turn it around.
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 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 long for real and true connection. It has been the theme of all the songs in my whole life.
I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time.
Fundamentally, our job as songwriters is to sit down and listen.
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.
What I've found at 48 years old is that there's nothing about me that's unique.
'I Drink' took me two years to write.
Art, when done well, creates empathy.
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.
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 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.
Music had always been a kind of anchor for me. But I didn't write my first song till I was 35.
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.
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?
If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.
People who have been through trauma, their souls are hurting.
What I really like is this salted calamari - with jalapenos on top.
I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.
I'm grateful to songwriting and recovery to bringing me to a place of peace.
I love SongwritingWith:Soldiers.
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.
There's such a thing as a tribe - and family of choice.
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 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.
Soldiers are trained not to be vulnerable, but when they come home, they've got to learn it.
I did not know that the wounds of war are often invisible.
Songs, especially lyrics, have always been really important to me.
Music and books, I think, were the two things I trusted the most as a child - songs and books.
As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness.
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.
A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them.
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 did not know that if a member of a family serves, the whole family serves. I did not know that the spouses of our service members carry such a heavy load.
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.
It is a form of arrogance to assume that other people are even thinking about you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've learned our soldiers are so much like everybody else. They're just put into an extreme situation.
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.
I don't have the experience of being in a war.
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.
When you see validation for a life's work and dedication, it's a beautiful day.
Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.
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.
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.
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.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician