Quotes

You can watch a little bit of war from your nice living room - 30 seconds of what's going on in Syria - and when you've had enough, switch over to some celebrity programme. We live our life through screens and images in this way, and we don't know what is real or fake anymore. It doesn't matter.

Celebrities do look different in real life from our images of them - there is a big gap. And that is what my work is about: the gap between the image and the celebrity themselves.

You know, for most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can't help responding to its honesty. It's music that finds its way deep into your soul because it's strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.

When it's open and honest, that's when the real nature of who you are as a vocalist or as a performer, all of that stuff can finally start to become what it's supposed to be. Like a settling into yourself. It's not even a musical thing, it's a whole mindset, a whole acceptance of who you were supposed to be. Life sounds good.

I don't know if bliss is possible and I've always thought that my best times will be later in life.

Obviously you don't want to be anonymous, but you don't want everyone to know your life.

My private life... Nobody should care. I think it's weird.

Being on the road, I think, is the most organised part of my life. You know where you have to be every day; you know what your job is every day. I crave that tiny bit of stability, which anyone else would think is the most unstable way of living, ever.

If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.

I've spent my whole life in airports. I don't come home but every two and a half months, which is pretty crazy.

I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times. But what concerns me is the idea of being an obese old woman, because I don't like the idea of being physically incapable in someone else's hands.

In a recession, people want to be told for two hours that everything is going to be OK. They want to escape from their humdrum or painful reality into a feel-good drama, or a love story that transcends their daily life.

When I am going through something monumental or difficult in my life it is hard to look at it as it is because it is too much.

As a person life has always been a bit of a challenge for me and I have spent so much of my early years in fear and I think that making music makes me want to be more courageous.

When you have goals and dreams and things that you've been wanting your whole life, and then they actually start happening and you start checking things off your list, it's like, whaaat? Huhhh?

As a musician, you kinda get used to failure in life, and then when things actually start succeeding, it's a very interesting feeling.

I was a very quiet kid who didn't feel normal being outgoing and running around, so all the beauty that was in my life, I found in books. Books that made me think and transported me into a different world.

I always wanted to be an artist of some sort and I was really shy growing up, so performing didn't really seem like a natural choice, but whenever I got on stage to do something I felt more comfortable than I did in real life.

I firmly believe in real-life fairy tales.

Even when my every inclination is to be otherwise, I don't want to live my life on the dark side of things. Sometimes that takes a little bit of effort, and when that's the case music is the way that I totally make sense of things.

What's wrong with extreme dieting and hard-core fitness plans is that they don't take into account the rest of your life.

I battled with my weight as a teenager, partly because there wasn't the information or conversation about how to live a healthy lifestyle.

Thank God my life is normal. I work hard to make it normal. My husband and I don't want Hollywood drama. I go to the market and do the dishes. I'm not treated differently because I work on TV.

I've actually suffered from allergies my entire life. My mom had allergies, so I was aware of what an issue they can be. Many people allow their allergies to affect their lives. As a mom with two kids and two jobs, I just can't let allergies slow me down. It's a day to day thing that can really be remedied by finding the right medication.

The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and 'The Tudors,' people's perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right.