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

It’s ignorant to think you know everything about a person. There’s many different sides to everybodys personality and there’s just different colours to a personality.

I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.

I may not be Einstein but I know dumb plus dumb equals you.

I’m so happy now. I love that I’m in a relationship right now… I want a life… The past five years or so I’ve found my groove and my balance.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there’s this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, ‘Well, you say I’m a pop star, so maybe that’s not true.’

I’ve never been more nervous in my life than singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.

Life’s too short to be a pushover.

Really, what I try to instill in my fans is to be healthy and happy. I have no desire to be super-skinny.

If I can wake up everyday before I die and know that I don’t have to serve anyone food or drinks, I will be happy!

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 live on a ranch in Texas and do my own thing. And I don’t care what anyone has to say about it. My joke is that the only people I’m trying to please are myself and my fans, because they’re the ones buying my records. And I have the best, most loyal fan base ever.

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.

The broken worlds we hide inside; that’s how we start to die!

I can feel the dust of her skin in my skin; and I think maybe that means these bones of mine have grown weary of crying too.

Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

I don’t know what my future holds but its not your hand.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me.

I feel like I have always played within the rules. I would never break the rules.

I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.

It’s good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you.