Ashley Monroe quotes:

I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart.

Baseball fans! Good lord! I feel like sports fans get mad at you easier than country music fans. It scares me. I'm glad that country fans don't get mad every time I mess up.

The first record I made when I was 17. Labels merged and plans didn't work out, but plans never work out as planned. But I never stopped making music. I never had a backup plan. I never thought, 'Maybe I should just write, or maybe I should...' I just kept going.

I think, being from east Tennessee, you're kinda born with a little lonesome in your soul, in your blood. You know you've got that Appalachian soul.

One of my favorite things to do is sit around and listen to old records... You're forced to listen to the whole thing. And it's so cool digging through the bins trying to find them. I get giddy about records.

Roy Acuff's from Maynardville, and that's where a lot of my family's from. So he's, I've been told, a distant cousin, as well.

When I hear a great country song, I get chills and I want to cry. You feel something. And just sometimes that magic and the stars line up somehow or another, and it creates something that's really, really, really special.

I always sang when I was little-bitty girl. I sang all the time. And then I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I sang in a show at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You know, they have all those variety shows where Dollywood is. And I sang there and yodeled and clogged, but I never wrote my own songs.

To just get in front of different kinds of audiences is important for me. I do think it's important for music to be a big family. Whether it's country or not.

When my dad passed, there's a lot of sadness right below the surface, and I think there will be until the day I die. So, writing sad songs helps it. And when I sing them, it's pure therapy for me.

When I sing, I go somewhere else. Every time after I sing, I'll ask, 'Did I do OK?' Because I feel like it's like my soul squeezing out of my vocal chords. I don't sit there and think about 'I'm gonna do this next...' I just sing. I sing from my heart, and my heart's got a little lonesome in it.

The core of me is country. It's what I love. It's what I write. Even when I sing pop stuff, I'm still singing it 'countrily.'

I feel like it's the most unnatural thing for two humans, especially of the opposite sex, to live in harmony under one roof. You realize how different men and women are.