I love nutcrackers, as I was a ballerina growing up.

I didn't even know any cowboys growing up. When my friends heard that I was marrying a cattle rancher and moving to the country, they literally could not believe it. They started calling me the Pioneer Woman as a joke.

I've set aside a nice chunk of my advertising revenue each month for giveaways, like a KitchenAid mixer. I like buying them for the audience, because without the audience I wouldn't have the blog or the revenue in the first place.

We used to have skunks that would go under our house and scratch their backs. I remember after I had my first baby, I didn't really have many friends, but I got invited to a dinner with a group of people from town. We all took the same vehicle, and I got in, and someone goes, 'I smell skunk.' I had to fight back tears.

I was hit for the first time before I was married.

The world has changed utterly. There was a time when you couldn't marry a Protestant. There was a time when you got married that the women had to give up their job in the public service, and when they got married, they were owned by their husbands. That's all changed.

I'm not really a believer in romantic, happily-ever-after love stories.

Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the tireless walker. The radical, the protector of orphans, helper of the needy, man of good works, the republican. The hater and the lover of America. The giver of parties, the magician, the traveler.