I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry, Dottie West, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens... not realizing it was influencing me as much as it was.

Forget about surviving 40 years in the music business. Just surviving 27 years of Nicole Richie has been a struggle-and-a-half, I want to tell you. I stand here as a survivor, I want you to know, for all the parents out there.

I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing.

It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.

Country music has always been about as close to R&B as you can possibly get. We're storytellers.

Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.

By growing up in Alabama, I had a melting pot of the whole pie: R&B, gospel, country.