"I'm always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I'm going to get up in the morning."

"I once went on the most grueling radio tour. Living in hotel rooms, sleeping in the backs of rental cars as my mom drove to three different cities in one day."

"When you're singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It's happening."

"I would love to continue in music, with writing... but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don't need to be blonde when I'm 60!"

"I write a lot of songs about love and I think that's because to me love seems like this huge complicated thing. But it seems like every once in a while, two people get it figured out, two people get it right. And so I think the rest of us, we walk around daydreaming about what that might be like. To find that one great love, where all of a sudden everything that seemed to be so complicated, became simple. And everything that used to seem so wrong all of a sudden seemed right because you were with the person who made you feel fearless."

"There's something so beautiful about people who are heartbroken; they think about how they're feeling much more. I think when you're happy and when you're in love, you don't need to think about it, it's just there. Love is one of those things that is so simple, you don't need to think about it when it's good, you only need to think about it when it's bad, so when music is all that you have and you're lonely or you're missing someone and you write a song that says exactly how you feel, there is sort of a gratification you get from that, it almost helps you move on."

"My mom and I have always been really close. She's always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn't have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always."

"When I'm getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive."

"I hope you know that you've given me the courage to change. I hope you know that who you are is who you choose to be, and that whispers behind your back don't define you. You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for."

"Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!"

"If somebody hurts you, it's okay to cry a river, just remember to build a bridge and get over it."

"My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion."

"When I'm 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I'll be like: 'Cool, I'll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.'"

"The only one who's got enough of me to break my heart."

"I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny."

"I'm intimidated by the fear of being average."

"Rebellion is what you make of it. When you've been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious."

"I've always strived to be successful, not famous."

"I've found time can heal most anything and you just might find who you're supposed to be."

"A lot of people think if they're shouting the loudest, they'll be heard, but most people lose respect for you when you lose your cool. You have to maintain everyone's respect, especially as a woman in a position of power. It's terrible to be at that kind of disadvantage, where if you yell, people will talk about you behind your back more than if you were a man. Because of those social injustices we face as women, you have to make sure that no one can call you a crazy bitch."

"This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change."

"In a relationship each person should support the other; they should lift each other up."

"Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I've never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line's always been really blurred for me. I'll hang out with them after the show. I'll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I'll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes."

"Love always ends differently and it always begins differently - especially with me."

"I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are."

"You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors. It's the morning of your very first day. You say hi to your friends you ain't seen in a while, try and stay out of everybody's way. It's your freshman year and your gonna be here for the next four years in this town. Hopin' one of those senior boys will wink at you and say, "You know I haven't seen you around before." 'Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them. And when you're fifteen, feelin' like there's nothin' to figure out, but, count to ten, take it in. This is life before you know who you're gonna be. Fifteen."

"I think every girl's dream is to find a bad boy at the right time, when he wants to not be bad anymore."

"If I think too hard about a relationship, I'll talk myself out of it."

"Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who's only texting you back three words. I've learned that from trying to figure out people who don't deserve to be figured out."

"Promise me this, that you'll stand by me forever. But if God forbid Fate should step in and force us into a goodbye. If you have children someday, when they point to the pictures please tell them my name. Tell them how the crowd went wild, tell them how I hope they shine."

"In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I'm always going to feel everything. It's my nature."

"I don't compare myself to anyone else; I don't make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that's okay by me."

"We don't need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful."

"I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'"

"You're an expert at sorry and keeping the lines blurry."

"Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it's a green light."

"It never mattered to me that people in school didn't think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it - though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, 'I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.'"

"Do not compare yourself to others. if you do so you are insulting yourself."

"A few years have gone and come around when we were sittin' at our favorite spot in town and you looked at me, got down on one knee. Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle; the whole town came and our mammas cried. And you said "I do.", and I did, too. Take me home where we met so many years before; we'll rock our babies on the very front porch. After all this time, you and I. And I'll be eighty-seven you'll be eighty-nine, I'll still look at you like the stars that shine. In the sky. Oh, my my my."

"I think allowing yourself to cry on the bathroom floor is FEARLESS."

"There are no rules when it comes to love."

"To me, Fearless is not the absense of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death."

"Sometimes the person you'd take a bullet for is the person behind the trigger."

"We need music the most when we're feeling things really intensely. I think the most intense times in your life are when you're either falling in love or losing it."

"I'm typically single. I'm the girl who - I call it girl-next-door-itis - the hot guy is friends with and gets all his relationship advice from but never considers dating."

"Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration. All those emotions - spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion, all of that - in my mind, all those emotions are red. You know, there's nothing in between. There's nothing beige about any of those feelings, it all comes back to me, and it's red."

"You know, I went out on a normal amount of dates in my early 20s, and I got absolutely slaughtered for it. And it took a lot of hard work and altering my decision-making. I didn't date for two and a half years. Should I have had to do that? No."

"If you're the girl that needs a boyfriend, and once she loses that boyfriend needs to replace it with a different boyfriend, it's just this constant stream of boyfriends all the time. I don't feel like I ever want to be that girl. I want to be the girl that when she falls in love, it's a big deal and it's a rare thing."

"I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood."

"Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer."