I don't know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder... I think it's just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.

I really like Alan Jackson, in Country Music. I think he's really very, very talented along with George Jones, and Merle Haggard, the same old favorites.

There's no way to be able to tell what it's like to be a country singer until you're walking in the shoes.

You know, as any parent will say, you know, life happens.

Elvis was a big influence to my music, but Loretta Lynn was, as well.

You can run for cover, you can run for help. You can run to your lover, but you can't ever run from yourself.

Love should be simple, but it's not. Hate should be hard, but it's easy.

Words are not even within me. They're not in my vocabulary to really express the kind of feeling that I had.

The world says they'll never make it, love says they will.

But the main thing is that medication, too, is not all the help.

I have an unending desire to be better and make myself a better person, better mother.

Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.

While I was not entirely satisfied with the circumstances of my existence, I felt like the possibility of improvement still existed. That I could make happiness happen.

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.

It's not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news.

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'

All of us have schnozzles... if not in our faces, then in our character, minds or habits. When we admit our schnozzles, instead of defending them, we begin to laugh, and the world laughs with us.

The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

I got to work with one of my heroes, Johnny Depp, and to see how he goes about business, which was really inspiring for me at this stage in my career.

We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.