My mom and I have always been really close. She's always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn't have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always.
Just because you make a good plan, doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen.
People like music when they're in love, but they don't need it as much. You need music when you're missing someone or you're pining for someone or you're forgetting someone or you're trying to process what just happened.
When I am talking to people who I feel don't like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.
I don't like to feel like I'm in a club when I'm in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.
I'd like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!
People don't usually compliment your character.
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?
I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can't get bitter, we can't get jaded.
I've seen my friends take someone back after they've cheated because they fit perfectly.
I have been singing randomly, obsessively, obnoxiously for as long as I can remember.
One thing I've tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.
I'm a Sagittarius, and one of our major qualities is that we're blindly optimistic.
For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to limit you.
I'm interested in Jackson Pollock's kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it's nothing, and yet it's incredible.
I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.
I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny. And wonderful.
I'd like to think you don't stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.
I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'
Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I've met.
I'm not really that girl who dreams about her wedding day.
I've been my mom's kitchen helper since I was a little kid.
I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.
Love always ends differently and it always begins differently - especially with me.
I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.
I haven't had that one great love, which is good. I don't want that to be in the past - I want it to be in the future.
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.
There are no rules when it comes to love.
Here's what I've learned about deal-breakers. If you have enough natural chemistry with someone, you overlook every single thing that you said would break the deal.
I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.
You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you're obsessed with yourself, and I'm not - you can become unhinged so easily.
For me, when I picture the person I want to end up with, I don't think about what their career is, or what they look like. I picture the feeling I get when I'm with them.
I get really restless when I haven't worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!
Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you're heartbroken, but tomorrow you'll be in love again.
I think about food literally all day every day. It's a thing.
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.