Crystal Bowersox

Acting was my first love before music.

I have a lot of love and respect for Melissa Etheridge. I love Joe Cocker, Ray LaMontagne, Feist.

For me, marriage is about love, not paperwork. I've never been the kid who dreamed of the big white dress, the long veil, the fancy diamond ring.

This sounds really cheesy and weird, but the pitbull is a sweet animal that just wants love until it's provoked - that's kind of how I've lived my life, too.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was 22. It was really scary because I was working the music thing, and with a kid coming, you just can't live that life with a child.

I went into the 'Idol' audition with no expectations; that's just the kind of person I am. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't hurt so badly, you know? But once I made it past the first round, and the second, and third - I started to realize, 'Maybe my goals and dreams really are attainable.'

I went to a public school in Oak Harbor, Ohio, and it's a very rural community. I was an artist kid, and I just didn't fit in very well.

I did pretty well busking. I would play two to eight hours a day, and I could make two or three hundred an hour.

It's not a natural process, 'American Idol,' but it does great things for the people that are on that show. If you don't walk away from it with some kind of positive outlook or find an opportunity to come from it, then I feel like that's a choice.

I don't think anyone's sexuality needs to be a public issue other than to give others the confidence to love themselves wholeheartedly and to be their true, authentic self without any shame.

I know that, as a bisexual, sometimes people who are gay or lesbian look down upon the bisexual community as well and assume that people who are bisexual just don't know what they want or are just playing both sides of the fence, and that's not the case, either.

I had what you could call a chaotic childhood. My parents divorced when I was 2; I went back and forth between my mom's and dad's houses for years. But, you know, my parents tried to do the right thing. As crazy as everything was, and as much fighting and everything, there was always a feeling of support from them.