Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Art, when done well, creates empathy.
I think music is the highest form of healing.
The world doesn't need any more pretty good songs.
In a lot of ways, songwriting helped save my life.
I try not to eat cakes, but sugar screams my name.
Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.
There's such a thing as a tribe - and family of choice.
I did not know that the wounds of war are often invisible.
A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway.
People who have been through trauma, their souls are hurting.
I would make a terrible soldier, because I don't follow orders.
Fundamentally, our job as songwriters is to sit down and listen.
If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.
Songs are here to help us: they build bridges from heart to heart.
If you don't have a record deal, you've got to be a record company.
I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time.
I'm grateful to songwriting and recovery to bringing me to a place of peace.
I don't really write for catharsis; I get that kind of work done in therapy.
When you see validation for a life's work and dedication, it's a beautiful day.
I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably be in therapy all of my life.
It is a form of arrogance to assume that other people are even thinking about you.
I have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.
Once I got my life sorted and started to get healthy, then I was able to focus on writing.
I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat.
Soldiers are trained not to be vulnerable, but when they come home, they've got to learn it.
I've always been drawn to the hard story, the trauma, because I think art can turn it around.
Music had always been a kind of anchor for me. But I didn't write my first song till I was 35.
Music and books, I think, were the two things I trusted the most as a child - songs and books.
A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them.
I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.
As a songwriter, I was always mining my own depths, which were filled with confusion and darkness.
I got sober at 27 and started writing around 30 and started playing music in public around 32, 33.
I've learned our soldiers are so much like everybody else. They're just put into an extreme situation.
I always knew I was going to make a record called 'The Foundling.' Since I picked up a guitar, I knew it.
When I first got sober, I hadn't read anything for six or seven years. I didn't have even that much focus.
The job of the artist is to go to the places where most other people are embarrassed to go to. And show it.
Ultimately, what I want is for my songs to outlive me: I want my songs to keep being played even after I'm gone.
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 think we're very much in a mystery here in this life and that artists try to pierce the mystery with their art.
I think I'll always draw from being a person that doesn't know how to have a normal life, whatever a normal life is.
When I finally got sober, I moved towards what I might have been if I hadn't been destroying myself when I was young.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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 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.