Mary Gauthier Quotes

Author Image

Mary Gauthier

Profession : Musician

Birth : March 11, 1962

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

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

Creating something beautiful out of pain helps ease the pain. So, that's kind of how I got to songwriting - quite honestly out of desperation.

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

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

Mary Gauthier

The belief when your mother gives you away is that there's something deeply wrong. Mothers don't give babies away. There's something wrong with me, something unlovable, something seriously flawed in me. It's a fundamental thing; it's precognitive. You feel it rather than think it. How could you not?

Mary Gauthier

A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway.

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness.

Mary Gauthier

I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

In a lot of ways, songwriting helped save my life.

Mary Gauthier

Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.

Mary Gauthier

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

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.

Mary Gauthier

I'm grateful to songwriting and recovery to bringing me to a place of peace.

Mary Gauthier

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

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier

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.

Mary Gauthier