It's honestly every time that I'm doing something, and every time I visit a station and hear my song on the radio and people buying my stuff, I'm like 'Are you kidding me? This is insane!'

I would love to do a duet with Tim McGraw. I think that would be fun.

I have too much drive and determination to let anything falter me.

I do remember the people who believed in me in the beginning. I'll never forget that.

I have an amazing family. I was raised in a wonderful mid-west family.

I think I have a good head on my shoulders.

I'll never sing something that I've never been through. So even if I didn't write it, I have to have at least experienced it.

I think music changes and it evolves.

Hockey is my favorite because I'm from Michigan. I used to figure-skate and root for the Red Wings.

I love music, that it changes so much, but I also want to keep a bit of the country roots to make it country. I don't want to go too far away from it, or I would do pop music.

L.A. was never me. Nashville is my home.

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.

I have discovered that sitting still leaves little spaces for the grief to get in, so I stay busy.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

That's the beauty of starting lines: Until you begin a new venture, you never know what awaits you.

Atlanta is not like New York, where everybody piles into one place.

When we take out school psychologists, truant officers, counselors, art, music, and athletics, and bring in the police, the school gets turned into a feeder system for the penal system.

There was probably something as a child I wanted to express, something unsaid that I needed to share.

Unless an action is rightly thought out and its steps rightly planned, every stage of its performance will probably remain vague and therefore unsatisfactory for the doer and all those concerned.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Compassion is the spontaneous wisdom of the heart.