For reasons I can't remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church's beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.
When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.
Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.
From the time I was a little girl, I'd just always been naturally curious. And I was raised in a family that... would just get really worked up about inequities and unfairness.
The perfect winter's night for me would be with all the family together. As you get a little older and everybody has their jobs and then families and kids, it definitely becomes harder to get everybody together at once.
If you have a friend or a family member who's bipolar, or has panic attack disorder, or is depressed, read up on it a little bit so you can get to know where they're coming from.
I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
I definitely want to have a family without a doubt. I want to know that kind of love, and I'm definitely thinking about it. I'm not afraid to have a little baby bump on stage someday.
I have an action figure, and so do my parents, so it's odd that we all have these dolls of ourselves. It's a little bit surreal but kind of fun. You can play with the whole family.
The events of my life are too unimportant, and have too little interest for any person not of my immediate family, to render them worth communicating or preserving.
The whole thing means such a great deal for me, and hopefully one day it will be there. But my friends and my family mean a little more. I would rather be helping them, even if it hurts that.
And my daddy could play a harmonica and also the guitar, so I guess I got a little bit from both of 'em, but I think mostly from my mother's side of the family.
I see my friends, my family, my cousins work all day long for very little money, and if I have this problem of not being able to wall on the streets, it's not a big deal.
Of course, I will continue to share my favorite Southern recipes, just like my mama, grandmother and family shared with me over the years. And now, I'll be adding a little bit of a lighter touch to some of these wonderful dishes.
What little family I got is in Mississippi. A whole lot of them died before I left, and my sister died a long time ago, before my mama did.
I grew up in a very open-minded family. My father died when I was very little, so my mother was really, really incredibly busy trying to provide for us.
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we're not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls.
You don't know what the Chinese expect in the way of beauty. The presentation is just a farce. You come into a room filled with 50 people and they don't talk to you. There's very little interaction.
The beauty of where I'm from - this small little town called Wallburg, North Carolina - I didn't have a TV; I was out playing ball with my dad, shooting clay pigeons.
When I saw my first Broadway show, 'Beauty and the Beast,' I was like, 'Okay, I'm definitely gonna do this.' After that, I did little shows and started auditioning.
