It was my 16th birthday-my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do-write songs and sing them to people. [...] Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

Because I missed being with Prince on that [stadium ], and it's a lesson that sometimes you have to push yourself a little harder for your friends.

You can't just be a wimp and then a year and a half or two years later decide to not be a wimp anymore. Because people will always treat you like a wimp once they have decided that's what you are. You have to be strong and tough and intelligent and smart and kind of plan out what you're going to say and know who you are. So that people will get that right away. Because then they're always going to be great to you. And they're always going to treat you with respect.

I want to be age appropriate. I don't want to be that girl you see walking away and she looks 25 and then she turns around and she looks 90.

The female rock-'n'-roll-country-pop songwriter is back, and her name is Taylor Swift. And it's women like her who are going to save the music business.

And I knew then, as I know now, that I still have so much to do.

When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.