My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

So many girls come up and say to me, 'I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn't even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I'm obsessed.' That's the coolest compliment to me.

When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it's been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can't stop thinking about.

I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control. Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

When I was growing up, I didn't really know much about being popular or cliques or anything like that. In elementary school and middle school, you start to kind of realize what it's all about. There are cool kids, and then there's you, and you're just trying to figure out where you fit in.I learned a lot about acceptance and rejection,Those are the themes that you'll find spread throughout my music and weaved in throughout all of the lyrics. I really know what it's like to be accepted, and I also know what it's like to be rejected. And those are lessons I learned in Wyomissing.

The only way I hear gossip is if it's big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it's, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist - and she hates making that phone call!