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.

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

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.

It can take me many months to write one of my own songs.

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

I would make a terrible soldier, because I don't follow orders.

I've got lots of problems. Being gay isn't one of them.

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'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 love SongwritingWith:Soldiers.

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.

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

A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Art, when done well, creates empathy.

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.

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 Drink' took me two years to write.

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.