Growing up, I remember thinking country music was all honky-tonks and beer and trucks - Britney Spears was my first concert.

Growing up in east Tennessee gave me my country roots, my twang, and a lot of my stories.

When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that's when it switched for me to songwriting. That's when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.

In my opinion, it's all about the song and the performance, not the gender.

I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience - and I'm trying really hard not to be fake. And in writing, as in life, it's harder than you think.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

Because no matter what you say in life, the truth will always be the truth. You know when someone is telling the truth, you look in the eyes. I have a tendency to believe people.

I learned there are ways to approach life. You can never change the events, but you can change the way you approach them.