The road is hard, and you have to get accustomed to it.

Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'

I literally wouldn't have dreamed of it in a million years that I'm going to be standing there with George (Strait) and Garth and Kenny (Chesney) and Reba (McEntire) and Brooks & Dunn. I don't really have any clue what I'm actually doing with those people because I feel like I'm still just getting started and I've seen them all in concert and they're all my heroes.

Long intros are cool because there's a little bit of anticipation, you know?

At the very beginning of my career I felt very strongly about what type of artist I wanted to be.

I did surveillance a lot, which sounds exciting, but it never was.

Country music is different because we [musicians] are all actually happy for each other. We're all friends. It's a little family. So if you don't win [an award], usually one of your friends does. So it's kind of a cool thing. I think it's the only genre of music to have that camaraderie.