“Pick the weeds and keep the flowers.”

I’m cute – and God I hate that. Because that’s not cool. I’m like your niece, and nobody wants to date their niece. It’s the chubby cheeks. The whole reason people voted for me on American Idol is because I’m an everyday, normal girl.

And more so now, since having a family – I don’t seek out any other acceptance.

People are really concerned about my relationship status. When I tell people I’m happy being single, they don’t believe me. They say: ‘You have to be miserable being alone’.

I was a poor kid, and my mom was a single mother of three.

This is my life; these are my fingerprints; I’m unique; this is what I want to do. You worry about your own front porch and what’s happening in your own world.

I’ve loved my 20s, but I would never repeat them.

I’m waiting for the floor to drop out from under me.

Everyone says I’m like the girl next door. Y’all must have really weird neighbors!

I don’t obsess about my weight, which is probably one of the reasons why other people have such a problem with it.

I would not be a good mother. I mean, I love being an aunt to my niece and nephew. And I used to want to, like, adopt 10 kids – because I had friends who were adopted, and I thought that was the coolest thing, to be chosen. But again, my job is too selfish.

I have the world’s worst pregnancies.

Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.

People keep asking me if I am having more fun, being blonde, but I always have fun! Whether I’m blonde, redhead, or brunette! I always have fun.

I’m proud of everything I achieved with ‘Idol,’ and away from ‘Idol’ also. It’s just such a different show now to what it was when I was on it. I didn’t even know it was a TV show until the third audition.

Honestly, I just think we all have special gifts, everyone. You know, obviously, some are more noticeable than others and that’s why there’s the limelight. Everybody’s in it.

I’ve just never cared what people think. It’s more if I’m happy and I’m confident and feeling good, that’s always been my thing.

Pain made me grow in the most unexpected places. And now I know what it feels like to be a wildflower.

Never again will I hand deliver my heart to a man holding flowers when the thorns cut me deeper than the flowers ever made me happy.

I must have flowers, always, and always.

Storms can ruin gardens, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see flowers again.

Wound to wisdom, pain to power. A seed of grief, now time to flower.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.