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

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.

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

Life is a beautiful dream to be cherished, as long as it lasts.

All men by nature desire to know.

Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.

She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.

Reduce US military presence in Iraq; and bring in neighbors.

I don't have a gardener because I enjoy pulling weeds. It's hard to explain but there is something fulfilling about pulling out a weed and knowing that you got all the roots.

To me, Gospel music is really any music that's a testimony and tells a story of what God has done in your life.

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

People who stand up against wars aren't necessarily always wrong.

More than anything that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.