My mom was a piano teacher. It turned into something of a competition between me and her students... I liked the idea that I needed to be better than everybody else.

Any time you write a song, you kind of know what you want from it. You know what you're getting from it.

I see musicians like Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris as more than just musical icons: they are planets, with a gravitational pull - from how they flip their hair just-so when they bow, right down to their hearty backstage banter. It takes decades to learn the innuendos of being gracious and genuine all at once.

Set lists are like movies. They need a great beginning, a dynamic shift in the middle, and bang at the end.

The misconception about the record company is that they were the ones who got me wearing short skirts, or got me to do my hair blond, or got me to dance around onstage and start doing different things with my clothes. No, that was actually all me.

For all the flack that we get for becoming successful, you get people who really respect how firmly planted our feet have been in Vermont.

I've seen Coldplay live a couple of times, and you feel like you just got rained over with glorious, glowing love. That's a good feeling to leave people with.

I think I knew when I was about 2 and a half that I wanted to be a singer.

I'm really into poetry.

Trends suck you in, anywhere in the world, patterns you don't even see. It's so easy. Look at Wall Street - look at any sports team in the world - there are trends. Look at exercising. Nothing but patterns and trends, and that's what I started to see. Like a flock of birds all flying in one direction.

It took a lot of years for me to get comfortable, strutting my stuff, dancing like a fool, having that sparkly dress on that says, 'Here I am.'

I know it's strange, but I've always had a better time with other people's wild ideas. Coming up with my own is a deeply emotional and challenging thing to do.

It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.

I was like a closet makeup fiend as a little girl because I knew that I would be guffawed at in school if I wore too much makeup.

Being a rock and roll band is about spending time on the details so that you can hone your own identity.

I love a great pair of shoes, and as long as I feel like I can walk in them, I can dance in them.

What I'm wearing changes everything about how the show goes. If I'm wearing blue jeans and flannel, it's going to be a country show, and I'm going to get my twang on. But if I'm wearing a flapper dress, fringe or sequins, I'm rocking out, Tina Turner style.

I've gone from wearing jeans and cowboy boots to wearing miniskirts and gold tassels and high heels. I'm sure I'm not going to dress that way forever. It's going to change again and again.

My dad turned me onto Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and the Who, but Madonna and pop music came from my mom.

When I grew up and went to school, all the cool kids were in Carhartts and Mudd boots, and they were listening to the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers and driving Volkswagens.

I love Kind bars - I seriously always have them in my purse because they're so yummy.

I'm quite a nurturing person, and I'm more a mom than a crazy, partying rock star.

I'm from Vermont, where to be stylish and cool is to have a dirty pair of hiking boots and know how to change a tire, hang drywall, and bale hay. Those people are my home, and every time I come home, it reminds me that there's something to be said for being in the spotlight, but it can never be a whole part of me.

Mick Jagger knows how to run a show. It's all about pacing. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. His output is amazing, but his movements are subtle. As I get older, I'll have to adhere to these rules.

Honestly, I don't think I ever really was a sweet country girl. I think that was a misconception about me. I was always bad.

My parents raised me on Spooky Tooth and The Band, Derek and the Dominoes, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, all that stuff. Rock n' roll was just in my subconscious.

I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that.

Ever since I was a little girl, I loved dressing up.

When I'm onstage, I have to have primer. Actually, the more primer, the less makeup I have to put on.

There's nothing less sexy than a girl falling over on stage. I have fallen once, but it had nothing to do with my shoes. I'm legally blind, so I fell over a monitor because the stage was black, and I had no depth perception. Mortifying.

I grew up spending summer Saturdays at the local farmers' market, where my mom was a vendor. It fueled my passion for regional foods.