Taylor Swift

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it's been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can't stop thinking about.

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

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.

Don't ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can't have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one.

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.

If there's a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it's not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there's a house rumor, they'll find out it's not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

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.