I've been my mom's kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

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.

I once went on the most grueling radio tour. Living in hotel rooms, sleeping in the backs of rental cars as my mom drove to three different cities in one day.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink - boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It's hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

I can't deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you. It's a conscious thing; it's a common-sense thing.

I can't deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you.

In a relationship each person should support the other; they should lift each other up.

I don't know how to have a normal relationship because I try to act normal and love from a normal place and live a normal life, but there is sort of an abnormal magnifying glass, like telescope lens, on everything that happens.

'The Story of Us' is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, 'Is this killing you? Because it's killing me.' But I didn't. Because I couldn't. Because we both had these silent shields up.

I can imagine it's hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn't know.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don't recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

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.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I'll talk myself out of it.

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it's a green light.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That's the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

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.

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.

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.

Faith Hill is a big role model.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

My imagination is a twisted place.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

My dad is a Chatty Cathy, the social butterfly; friendly; knows everybody in the whole world by six degrees; tells me that every performance is the greatest he's ever seen, every new outfit is the coolest. Constant cheerleader.

I think about food literally all day every day. It's a thing.

The orchid's association in Chinese culture with such virtues as elegance, good taste, friendship, and fertility goes all the way back to Confucius himself, who was said to have a particular attachment to the flowers.

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower.

Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.

Quantity in diet is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

I think the biggest misconception about me is people really don't know who I really am. They see the party side of me, they see the crazy side of me. But I also have a laid-back side. You know, I'm chill, down to earth. If you want to grab a cup of coffee and just talk about life, I can do that.

To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

Be obscure clearly.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.