I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music 'made it' the same way. It's all different. There's no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

I'm captivated by you, baby, like a firework show.

I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town

you're an expert at sorry and keeping the lines blurry

You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for.

Believe in everything you do. Believe in your mistakes and grow from them.

No matter how bad your day is, just be grateful this day is added to your life.

I still love writing in my journal and wearing sparkly dresses and looking at old chandeliers.

People are going to judge you anyway, so you might as well do what you want.

I think every girl's dream is to find a bad boy at the right time, when he wants to not be bad anymore.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.

Often your utterances and expressions of your face leak out the secrets of your hidden thoughts.

I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

I think I can be competitive. Heck, anybody who can walk to the first tee here has a chance.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry

Probably the hardest thing to do was the beginning of the movie ["300"], I think, when we were in Sparta and all that - just getting in the groove.