I think you can have moderate success by copying something else, but if you really want to knock it out of the park, you have to do something different and take chances.

When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.

And I hate to see artists who are real safe. I love to see artists swing for the fences sometimes.

I'm a businesswoman. I am a music lover. I like for people to like my music. When you listen to top 40 radio, you hear pop stuff. You hear rock stuff. You hear all these different influences

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.

When you come close to selling out, reconsider.

And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder. You get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger. May you never take one single breath for granted. God forbid love ever leave you empty handed.

Never settle for the path of least resistance

I can see me continuing to make the best music I can, and let the chips fall where they may.

I don't sing country music because I'm not capable of singing other kinds of music; I sing it because I think it's the most beautiful kind of music there is

What is the fear of God? The grace to shun evil.

If you have to fall in love, fall in love with the magnificent beauty of a sunset. That love will beautify yourself and your world.

Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don’t know, but it’s a world where there’s no time, so space, no frontiers.

There can be no healing without truth.

I think there comes a point in probably most father-son relationships where the son kind of starts becoming the parent.

I do not enjoy when people don't like me.

Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em.

Every artist should live by these words: Never feel bad about successfully selling your creations. Never feel bad about creating art you can't sell.

It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing.