Many girls prepare their whole lives for this one moment. For me, I see Miss USA as an opportunity to reach new and greater heights in the future.

In pageants, you are evaluated from head to toe and its obviously all about looks, and as vain as that is, they can also bring you lots of opportunities to do amazing things.

I'm from Alabama and I have morals and I have class. That's my personality.

I just try to stick to clean foods, anything grilled like salmon, chicken, fish, brown rice, and veggies. I do have a really big sweet tooth, so I try to curb my cravings with fruit instead.

Ive never really been the type to dress up like the other girls do. Im more of a casual, relaxed kind of girl. More athletic.

Modeling and pageants help me overcome feeling insecure about the way that I look and my height.

I've done modeling since I was 18, but it didn't take off until I moved to Los Angeles. Modeling has always been something I've been really good at, and has been something that's helped pay bills.

Every single model wants to be in Sports Illustrated, and I feel extremely blessed to have that opportunity.

Pageant makeup is so different from your day-to-day look. When you're on stage you really have to pack it on.

I love you the way a knife loves a heart, the way a bomb loves a crowd, the way your mother warned you about, essentially.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.

I love the protests. And if you think about it, what better way to send a message to Wall Street than by sitting in a pup tent banging on a drum.

My father always told me, 'Don't waste energy worrying about things you can't control. Spend your energy focusing on solutions'.

My kids will find me walking around the house talking to myself and think I'm going crazy. I like to read the scripts out loud and really get the rhythm for the dialogue.

Fire, as we have learned to our cost, has an insatiable hunger to be fed. It is a nonliving force that can even locomote itself.

Heaven and earth, all the emperors, kings, and princes of the world, could not raise a fit dwelling-place for God; yet, in a weak human soul, that keeps His Word, He willingly resides.

I am no longer amazed by how quickly a man will justify his change of heart when a spear is leveled his way.

I believe there's a landscape that exists underneath everything that we can see in present-day stuff. And I think that makes life kind of a detective story.