“My mom and I are like sisters. We kind of grew up together. She always treated me as an adult. I never had curfew. She’s a workaholic, like I am. We’re not super family-oriented people, you know?”

I sound the same regardless if I’m 20 pounds heavier or 20 pounds light, and I think that’s the key thing with my fans and why they continue to be loyal because I’m that type of person.

Everything changes, but beauty remains.

Books have always been important to me – my mom was a first grade teacher, so I grew up reading all the time.

God will never give you anything you can’t handle, so don’t stress.

People like us we gotta stick together Keep your head up nothing lasts forever.

Even though I’m a pop singer, I really have more the life of a country singer.

The thing about Christmas is that it almost doesn’t matter what mood you’re in or what kind of a year you’ve had; it’s a fresh start.

I never said I was a ‘good girl.’ I’m not a bad girl. I’m just normal, and that’s what I’m going to be. There’s no bad girl with whips and chains that’s going to come out. I think people like me because I was myself.

Everyone is different: different shapes, sizes, colors, beliefs, personalities, and you have to celebrate those differences.

When people talk about my weight, I’m like, ‘You seem to have a problem with it; I don’t.

I still watch ‘Idol,’ and it’s still the No. 1 show, so obviously I’m not the only one who loves to sit at home and be entertained.

I wish I had a better metabolism. But someone else probably wishes they could walk into a room and make friends with everyone like I can. You always want what someone else has.

My happy weight changes. Sometimes I eat more; sometimes I play more. I’ll be different sizes all the time.

By keeping her heart protected, she’ll never ever feel rejected.

Gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change, and break away. I won’t forget the place I came from.

I don’t love traveling, because I’m never home. It’s hard when you have a family.

I certainly feel that an adult woman has a right to determine what happens to her life and body.

Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good.

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn’t have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn’t in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.