All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.

I've always strived to be successful, not famous.

All of my favorite people - people I really trust - none of them were cool in their younger years.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful.

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.'

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.'

It never mattered to me that people in school didn't think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it - though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, 'I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.'

When I'm 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I'll be like: 'Cool, I'll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.'

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it's cool that happens.

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.

I'm not really that girl who dreams about her wedding day.

I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway.

I'm intimidated by the fear of being average.

It's human nature to not say everything that's on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We're afraid of being embarrassed.

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.

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.

I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I've learned, and possibly the only advice I have to give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

We don't need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.

When I'm getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive.

It is possible for a woman to be a romantic, but also to be single and to be happy.

I have so many indie bands on my iPod. What I don't really understand is the attitude that if a band is unknown, they're good, and if they get fans, then you move on to the next band.

I'm not the girl who always has a boyfriend. I'm the girl who rarely has a boyfriend.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

If you cry over a guy, then your friends can't date him. It can't even be considered.

I'm the girl who - I call it girl-next-door-itis - the hot guy is friends with and gets all his relationship advice from but never considers dating.

I'm typically single. I'm the girl who - I call it girl-next-door-itis - the hot guy is friends with and gets all his relationship advice from but never considers dating.

You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that's great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.

I think every girl's dream is to find a bad boy at the right time, when he wants to not be bad anymore.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

When you are missing someone, time seems to move slower, and when I'm falling in love with someone, time seems to be moving faster.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever - wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don't get me.

It's so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you're supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of 'CSI' and 'Grey's Anatomy' episodes with pints of ice cream.

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

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.