I knew that it was harder to unite two lives than I had imagined growing up. I knew that relationships could be fragile.

I think it's important how I come across to my students. I want them to see how professional women dress.

I have visited classrooms near military bases to learn more about what schools were doing to support their military kids. I met with teachers overseas to learn about the particular needs they face thousands of miles from America. And I listened to my own granddaughter, who dealt with her father's yearlong deployment to Iraq.

There were times when I actually prayed not to get married.

I've never felt like I was in the cookie business. I've always been in a feel good feeling business. My job is to sell joy. My job is to sell happiness. My job is to sell an experience.

Everybody knows when you're a struggling family; you don't really know it when you're a kid. But you do know the difference between stress and moments of relief where there's, like, this happiness.

Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous of the passions; it is the only one which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.

As a songwriter, pop music really is a love and a joy and a science, and I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural.