What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of ‘CSI’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ episodes with pints of ice cream.
I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.
One element of Madonna’s career that really takes center stage is how many times she’s reinvented herself. It’s easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It’s inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable.
I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.
As your career grows, the list of things that makes you happy should not become smaller, it should become bigger.
I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.
I’ve been careful in love. I’ve been careless in love. And I’ve had adventures I wouldn’t trade for anything.
For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.
You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.
Nothing ruins your day more than getting a bad review.
I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.
I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.
I’m always worried about everything. Like spiders.
My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.
On ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ’cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.
You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.
I’m sick of the tabloids’ saying I obsess over guys. Why would you obsess over guys? They don’t like it.
In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better.
I think that you can love people without it being the great love.
I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.
My confidence is easy to shake. I am very well aware of all of my flaws. I am aware of all the insecurities that I have.
One thing I’ve tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.
I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.
I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I’ve kept that mentality. Just because there’s a hurricane going on around you doesn’t mean you have to open the window and look at it.
As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing – hopefully.
I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.
For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.
I don’t ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It’s like, ‘Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.’
I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.
I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.
The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.
I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.
There’s room for role models who make mistakes.
I have been singing randomly, obsessively, obnoxiously for as long as I can remember.
The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.
I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do.
I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.
People don’t usually compliment your character.
I’m the type of person, I have to study to get an A on the test.
For me, great music doesn’t just have to fall into one category or one genre and I love appreciating all kinds of music.
I love the ending of a movie where two people end up together. Preferably if there’s rain and an airport or running or a confession of love.
‘The Story of Us’ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up.
I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.
I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.
When you walk out onstage in front of 65,000 people, it can bring you to tears.
There are certain people who elicit a really passionate response. It’s crazy. That’s my Alexander Wang theory.
All of my favorite people – people I really trust – none of them were cool in their younger years.
When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.
I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‘Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.’
I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.
I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.
It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.
When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‘Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.’ I’m thinking, ‘That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.’
When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.
People say that about me, that I apparently buy houses near every boy I like – that’s a thing that I apparently do. If I like you I will apparently buy up the real-estate market just to freak you out so you leave me.
Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.
But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.
If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.
I love the scents of winter! For me, it’s all about the feeling you get when you smell pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, gingerbread and spruce.
It feels kinda weird being back in a high school cause I haven’t been in a high school for about a year. So um, it’s kinda interesting coming back, and y’know seeing the lockers, with all the signs, the handmade signs, so being in high school again is a little bit strange but in a good way.
I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.
I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.
I am an over-achiever, and I want to be known for the good things in my life.
I can’t deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you.
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!
I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.
I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.
