The thing about Nashville is, it's not just country music...There's rock & roll, there's every kind of music. It's just a music town...There's so much fun stuff to get in to.

The thing about taking risks is, if it’s really a risk, you really can fail. It’s only a pretend risk if you really can’t fail.

My life started being awesome five years ago.

My twin sister, my cousin, and I used to write and perform plays for my family. We raided the closets for costumes and fought over parts. I'm sure I was the bossiest one.

I'm obsessed with 'Thelma and Louise,' and therefore obsessed with Callie Khouri who wrote that movie.

I always want to stretch myself and do something that I haven't done before.

It’s funny – my married friends tell me all the time, 'What you have is so much easier.' When you’re doing it on your own, you don't have to [argue over] how you're raising the kids.

My whole background is theater, and theater is to some degree presentational.

Divorce is hard. I was about 29 when my husband and I split up. I think we probably fared better than most, because we were young and didn't have kids - but divorce is hard.

I grew up singing. My mother was a music teacher.

You are the only common denominator in everything that has happened to you in life, be it good or bad. To learn/grow from these experiences, you must accept the role you played in each of them.

I don't believe in miracles. My life is a miracle.

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

I've tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!

'Peace' is when nobody's shooting. A 'just peace' is when our side gets what it wants.

To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.

But if you're looking to be spooked by really tall trees then you've got to go to Washington State.

Patriarchy's chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole.

Your environment influences your mindset.

Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.