Taylor Swift

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 think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I'm concerned, love is absolutely everything.

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

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.

I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I've kept that mentality. Just because there's a hurricane going on around you doesn't mean you have to open the window and look at it.

I've never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

Even if you're happy with the life you've chosen, you're still curious about the other options.

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.

I am completely fascinated by the differences and comparisons between real life and fairy tales because we're raised as little girls to think that we're a princess and that Prince Charming is going to sweep us off our feet.

So many girls come up and say to me, 'I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn't even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I'm obsessed.' That's the coolest compliment to me.

It's pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.