I had my first date in 1999 when I was 16 years old. I was so excited! I walked into the living room to watch out the window for him and my dad was cleaning his shotguns!!!! My mom yelled at him for a while and, uh, the guy never asked me out again…”

“Sometimes a girl`s gotta have some chocolate!”

“I`m a horror-movie fan: Halloween (1978), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980)– I freak myself out sometimes when I`m home alone.”

“I like to dance around the house when I`m getting ready. It gets my day going.”

“When I first got to Hollywood. I was just walking around, taking pictures of the palm trees and stuff like that. And this guy walked up to me and asked if I`d seen any stars and I said, “No, it`s been kind of cloudy today.”"

“We don`t have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from-Oklahoma. We don`t ride around in covered wagons, either.”

“Throw caution to the wind and just do it.”

“This is the best night of my life. And it`s going to get better.”

“There`s not ever much of anything going on in my head.”

“There`s a lot of things that are said on the American Idol message board. I quit reading them because most of the people are very mean.”

“There are a few people I`ve expressed interest in working with. It`s amazing to me that all these big names want to work with me.”

“The only other time I`ve been away from home was when I went to college. And that was just an hour away, so I could always go home if I needed to.”

“So many people always try to help me carry my luggage and help me do things I can do myself. If I can do it myself, I`m going to do it myself. I`m not going to let other people do it for me, and I think that`s a big part of where I came from. I`m not a real prissy girl.”

“Right afterwards there was a whole, whole lot of press to do, so the week after, all day, every day, was press so I didn`t really get a chance to celebrate.”

“My very first magazine cover was the National Enquirer.”

“It`s nice to know you have support. Last night I got a marriage proposal. I just laughed.”

“It`s especially going to be great to get out there and perform in front of big crowds without having to worry about the competition aspect of it.”

“It`s been pretty crazy. I`ve been in L.A. or New York or Nashville or all over the place. I got to go home for about a total of a week.”

“I`ve never really been anywhere, and now I get to go everywhere. I just have to make sure there`s enough memory on my computer to hold all my pictures.”

“I`ve heard all kinds of crazy rumors about myself. I`ve even heard that I`m pregnant! I`ve become real good about laughing things off-I figure I`d better get used to it.”

“I`m not worried. I`m just so grateful to be in the position that I`m in. I`m just going with the flow right now, and I think my album will come together quite nicely because I think everybody is on the same page.”

“I`m fighting a losing battle here: I`m trying to lose some weight. I love chocolate; that`s one of my biggest downfalls. I haven`t gotten a whole lot of chocolate, thank goodness, because I`d probably be about 300 pounds.”

“I wondered how people would take me being a country music singer. I thought about deviating from that and singing other things. But… it doesn`t really make sense for me to try to be something that I`m not.”

“I want people to think of me as a nice person. I really am so blessed. All of this has been a great experience and I thank the American public so much for putting me in this position. I appreciate every second of it.”

“I want my permanent address to be in Oklahoma. Someday, when I get married and I have kids, that`s where I want to raise my kids.”