A tree is such a rich metaphor in a million beautiful ways. You can consider a tree growing and consider its connectedness to all things above and under the ground.

I look back on my 20s. It's supposed to be the prime of your life, the most vital, the most beautiful. But you're making your critical decisions and sometimes your most critical mistakes.

Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.

As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages.

My family is my greatest priority, but I'm committed to Little Big Town, and I have to make that a priority also.

Yes, it's true I once knocked out a horse. It was at a fiesta in my mother's home town of Guarare. Someone bet me a bottle of whiskey that I couldn't do it.

I want kids to be able to escape failing schools that trap them. And it's an unequal trapping of children. The most affluent find a way to escape. They move to a great suburban district or send their kid to a private school. The people who are trapped in the worst schools that have been terrible often for half a century? Those are the poorest kids.

I grew up on my dad's sets, but I was never star-struck or desperate to be famous. I grew up being a worker. It took me a long time to realise that my work ended up being seen by people. As far as I was concerned, I was just in the family business.