Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!
I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway.
It doesn't bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs - because at least they're looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.
I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written... Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn't have much of a social life going on.
My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.
You get to a point where it's like you can't really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.
You can plan on a change in the weather and time, but I never planned on you changing you mind.
A lot of people ask me, 'How did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and jump right into the music industry?' It's because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school. Because in the music industry, if they're gonna say no to you, at least they're gonna be polite about it.
If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it's cool that happens.
Living alone, you can do so many fantastic things I've learned. You can like, walk around and have so many conversations with yourself and sing your thoughts. I think I'm the only one that does that...
People haven't always been there for me, but music always has.
When I'm in my 50s, I kind of think I'll want to be in a garden.
Don't you ever grow up, it could stay this simple.
I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can't imagine going through that. If you know that's going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I'd rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?
My fans don't feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I'm going through now, they'll hear about it on a record someday. They'll hear the real story. There's a little bit of lag time. It's not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it's much more accurate.
I love the ending of a movie where two people end up together. Preferably if there's rain and an airport or running or a confession of love.
When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they're part of a family, not just a tour.
One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.
Vanity can apply to both insecurity and egotism. So I distance myself, because I feel everything.
All you need to do to be my friend is like me.
We don't need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.
Say it to them. Or say it to yourself in the mirror. Say it in a letter you'll never send or in a book millions might read someday. I think you deserve to look back on your life without a chorus of resounding voices saying 'I could've, but it's too late now.
I like touring extensively because I think the more hours you spend onstage, the more you know who you are onstage.
I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.
I'm very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn't choose.
A development deal is where they're giving you recording time and money to record, but not promising that they'll put an album out.
I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another.
I put out one album one week, and I'm already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.
Sometimes you see these people who are just so—God—so affected by all of it, where ambition has taken precedence over happiness. But when I meet people who really embody this serenity of knowing that they have had an amazing life—James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, and Ethel Kennedy... They just seem to be effervescent.
I go to Wal-Mart all the time. The one in my hometown of Hendersonville, Tenn., is open 24 hours, so I go there a lot to buy DVDs and stuff like that.
That moment when you buy scissors and then you try to open them but you can't because you DON'T HAVE SCISSORS.
You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you'd experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.
I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.
Life isn't how to survive the storm, it's about how to dance in the rain.
No matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it.
One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.
All we are is skin and bone trained to get along.
I think who you are in school really sticks with you.
I think when people make a record with a goal in mind - like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature - that gets in the way of writing great songs.
Most of my songs have names of people I've met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.
Mom is a planner, an organizer. She's very strong and practical. She's the person that'll tell me if I ever start to change my personality. The balance of the two of them created my personality.
The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you're 16 can mirror the one you have when you're 26. Life repeats itself.
You'll always know more in the future than you know now.
At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.
I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.
Just be yourself, there is no one better.
I'm always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I'm going to get up in the morning.
I've been my mom's kitchen helper since I was a little kid.
