Swift: "Anytime someone tells me that I can't do something, I want to do it more."

Swift: "At this point, I don't know if I want someone else in my life, I don't know if I want a family, all those things are up in the air, and that's more exciting to me. Because I'd really like to let life happen, rather than have some weird plan for it. I think if you have a plan, for like, 'I need to be married by this age, and then I need to have kids by this age...' you kind of force your life to take that course. And you might not end up with the right person, you might be making decisions under duress of your own plans, and I'd just want to let my life happen."

Swift: "I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive."

Swift: "I am an over-achiever, and I want to be known for the good things in my life."

Swift: “If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.”

Swift: "I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one."

Swift: "Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That's the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing."

Swift: "I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues."

Swift: “The debate over whether people can change is an interesting one for me to observe because it seems like all I ever do is change. All I ever do is learn from my mistakes so I don’t make the same ones again. Then I make new ones. I know people can change because it happens to me little by little every day. Every day I wake up as someone slightly new. Isn’t it wild and intriguing and beautiful to think that every day we are new?"

Swift: "My mom has always been very logical, very practical, and I think that's why I've always been that way."

Swift: "When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control."

Swift: "I'm always worried about everything. Like spiders."

Swift: "I don't live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free."

Swift: "I get nervous for everything - literally everything."

Swift: "Hey, I really have decided that school is a big disappointment. It's only cool when you're popular, I'm not. It's cool when you have a boyfriend, It's cool when everybody likes you, I don't have that. But my extracurricular 'life' is what really matters to me. I guess I'm just not good enough for people my own age, or maybe I'm not bad enough?"

Swift: “I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.”

Swift: “Some people just attract attention and excitement. It’s kind of unexplainable. People study it. There’s a science to the It factor. There are certain people who elicit a really passionate response. It’s crazy. That’s my Alexander Wang theory.”

Swift: "I put every one of my actions through a filter before I do them because that's the way my life is."

Swift: “I get so ahead of myself. I’m like, ‘What am I going to be doing at 30?’ But there’s no way to know that! So it’s this endless mind-boggling equation that you’ll never figure out. I overanalyze myself into being a big bag of worries.”

Swift: "My imagination is a twisted place."

Swift: “I’ve learned that you can’t predict love or plan for it. For someone like me who is obsessed with organization and planning, I love the idea that love is the one exception to that. Love is the one wild card.”

Swift: “I was thinking, What is a strong female? Doesn’t necessarily have to be tough. Could be pretty.”

Swift: "I know who I'm going to vote for, but I don't think that it's important for me to say it, because it will influence people one way or another. And I just want to make sure that every public decision I make is an educated one."

Swift: "I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons."

Swift: "It was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you've got to work as hard as them."

Swift: “I really resent the idea that if a woman writes about her feelings, she has too many feelings... And I really resent the ‘Be careful, buddy, she’s going to write a song about you’ angle, because it trivialises what I do. It makes it seem like creating art is something you do as a cheap weapon rather than an artistic process.”

Swift: "You learn different tricks — you learn craft, you learn structure, all that — as you go."

Swift: “It’s a whole Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland structure here. It’s what the inside of my brain looks like, essentially.”

Swift: "I'm very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn't choose."

Swift: "I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written... Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn't have much of a social life going on."

Swift: "I love having a goal, feeling like I'm on a mission. I love trying to beat what I've done so far."

Swift: “If someone doesn’t seem to want to get to know me as a person but instead seems to have kind of bought into the whole idea of me and he approves of my Wikipedia page? And falls in love based on zero hours spent with me? That’s maybe something to be aware of. That will fade fast. You can’t be in love with a Google search.”

Swift: “If you start thinking you’ve got it down, that’s when you run into trouble—either by getting complacent or becoming mouthy.”

Swift: “I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers.”

Swift: "The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count."

Swift: "When I get on a roll with something, it's really hard for me to put it down unfinished."

Swift: "I have tunnel vision as far as this goes. I can always keep my eyes on the goal. If we had random notebook checks, my teachers might find biology notes, biology notes, then suddenly a bunch of lyrics."

Swift: "No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind."

Swift: "But in the last few years I've gotten better at just kind of laughing off things that absolutely have no bearing on my real life."

Swift: “As a teenager, I didn’t understand that saying you’re a feminist is just saying that you hope women and men will have equal rights and equal opportunities. What it seemed to me, the way it was phrased in culture, society, was that you hate men. And now, I think a lot of girls have had a feminist awakening because they understand what the word means. For so long it’s been made to seem like something where you’d picket against the opposite sex, whereas it’s not about that at all. Becoming friends with Lena – without her preaching to me, but just seeing why she believes what she believes, why she says what she says, why she stands for what she stands for – has made me realise that I’ve been taking a feminist stance without actually saying so.”

Swift: "Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake—only bite if someone steps on you."

Swift: "I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever - wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails."

Swift: “I think my favorite thing about seasons changing is the opportunity to look different.”

Swift: "I think that's what keeps drawing me to songwriting: the spontaneity of how you can get an idea at 4 in the morning or while walking through the airport, and also the fact that it's conveying a message to someone that's more real than what you had the courage to say in person."

Swift: "I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do."

[On her reaction to her brother telling her that he saw a guy walking down the street with a cat on his head]

Swift: “My first reaction was, ‘Did you take a picture?' And then I thought about it. Half of my brain was going, ‘We should be able to take a picture if we want to. That guy is asking for it – he’s got a cat on his head!’ But the other half was going, ‘What if he just wants to walk around with a cat on his head, and not have his picture taken all day?'”

Swift: "I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid."

Swift: "I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny."

Swift: "You only get so many firsts, each one is a blessing."

[On Selena Gomez]

Swift: "She's incredibly intelligent. People... it would scare them if they knew how smart she is."

Swift: "There might be times when you put your whole heart and soul into something, and it is met with cynicism or skepticism, but you can't let that crush you. You have to let that fuel you, because we live in a world where anyone has the right to say anything that they want about you at any time, but just please remember that you have the right to prove them wrong."

Swift: "People are going to judge you anyway, so you might as well do what you want."

Swift: "As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, 'All right, well, I'd like to headline a tour,' and then when I get there, we'll see what my next goal is."

Swift: "I try to implement as much spontaneity in my life as I possibly can."

Swift: "Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I've never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line's always been really blurred for me. I'll hang out with them after the show. I'll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I'll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes."

Swift: "If you're yelling you're the one who's lost control of the conversation."

Swift: "Evermore was the first time I didn't discard everything after I made something new, you know? It was weird I actually had to kind of fight off anxiety that I had in my head, like fear that was like, 'you need to change.'"

Swift: "If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don't stop, don't put it down."

Swift: “Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.”

Swift: "Just because you make a good plan, doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen."

Swift: “If a dude is threatened by the fact that I need security, if they make me feel like I am some sort of princessy diva—that’s a bad sign. I don’t have security to make myself look cool, or like I have an entourage. I have security because there’s a file of stalkers who want to take me home and chain me to a pipe in their basement.”

Swift: "Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less."

Swift: "I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, 'If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.'"

Swift: "I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I'd just write."

Swift: "Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration."

Swift: “I suffer from girl-next-door-itis where the guy is friends with you and that's it.”

Swift: “Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together. I hope you use yours for good, because the only words you'll regret more than the ones left unsaid are the ones you use to intentionally hurt someone.”

Swift: "One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same."

Swift: "I'm not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way. Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I'm seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me."

Swift: "If you write, you can turn your lessons into your legacy."

Swift: "One element of Madonna's career that really takes center stage is how many times she's reinvented herself. It's easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It's inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable."

Swift: "I love you like I love sparkles and having the last word. And that's real love."

Swift: "I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I've learned, and possibly the only advice I have to give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience."

Swift: “I like things you can touch and things you can keep, because every bit of communication we have is ephemeral in nature.”

Swift: "In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better."

Swift: "I know my flaws before other people point them out to me."

Swift: "I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever - wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails."

Swift: "If I'm gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That's how it works."

Swift: “I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list.”

Swift: "I've never felt like there's just one way to be beautiful."

Swift: “Real life is a funny thing, you know. In real life, saying the right thing at the right moment is beyond crucial. So crucial, in fact, that most of us start to hesitate, for fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. But lately what I've begun to fear more that that is letting the moment pass without saying anything.”

Swift: “Just because as human beings, what we can't have is what we replay in our head over and over again before we go to sleep.”

[On if she thinks about what she's gonna do in 20-30 years]

Swift: "No because that puts me into what I call, like, a panic spiral. Like I cannot do that. I've never been able to do that. It just freaks me out. When I zoom out too far, I freak out. Do I know where I'm gonna be or where I even want to be in 20 years? Absolutely not."

Swift: “Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.”

Swift: "I think most of us fear reaching the end of our life, and looking back, regretting the moments we didn't speak up. When we didn't say 'I love you.' When we should've said 'I'm Sorry.' When we didn't stand up for ourselves or some one who needed help."

Swift: "I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one."

Swift: "If you're being met with resistance, that probably means doing something new. If you're experiencing turbulence or pressure, that probably means you're rising."

Swift: “Being fearless isn't being 100% not fearful, it's being terrified but you jump anyway...”

Swift: "I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don't know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it."

Swift: "I don't believe in endorsing a product that you don't want to endorse."

Swift: "I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise."

Swift: "Factoring in millions of people when I'm writing a song is not a good idea. I don't ever do it."

[On the creation and release of her song, Exile]

Swift: "I didn't fuse myself to the idea that this was real until the album was actually out, and I remember, just like, going on drives and listening to 'Exile' thinking 'oh it happened this song got made, it got finished, it got put out into the world, and we're all happy about it and people are listening to it.'"

Swift: “I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.”

Swift: “When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.”

Swift: "I'm the type of person, I have to study to get an A on the test."

Swift: "When we got the recording back, we had no idea what he was going to do, and when we heard that part it was just like; hands on face, face is melting, everything is made out of confetti."

Swift: “When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be, like: ‘Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.'”

Swift: “If you go too far down the rabbit hole of what people think about you, it can change everything about who you are.”

Swift: “Apologizing when you have hurt someone who really matters to you takes nothing away from you. Even if it was unintentional, it’s so easy to just apologize and move on.”

Swift: “Other women who are killing it should motivate you, thrill you, challenge you and inspire you.”

Swift: “And when someone apologizes to you enough times for things they'll never stop doing, I think it's fearless to stop believing them. It's fearless to say 'you're not sorry' and walk away.”

Swift: "There are two ways you can get through pain. You can let it destroy you or you can use it as fuel to drive you to dream bigger."

Swift: "Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears."

Swift: “Just be yourself, there is no one better.”

Swift: "I write songs about my adventures and misadventures, most of which concern love. Love is a tricky business. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it. Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love. No one does! There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course. I can't plan for it. I can't predict how it'll end up. Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful. And even though there's no way to feel like I'm an expert at it, it's worth writing songs about -- more than anything else I've ever experienced in my life."

Swift: “I think there’s something so attractive about mystery.”

Swift: "I think my new list will be like places I want to see in the world, adventures I want to have, experiences I want to have, things I want to learn..."

Swift: "Never believe anyone who says you don't deserve what you want"

Swift: “Part of me feels you can’t say you were truly in love if it didn’t last. If I end up getting married and having kids, that’s when I’ll know it’s real – because it lasted.”

Swift: "Unique and different is the new generation of beautiful. You don't have to be like everyone else."

Swift: "I really love a turn of a phrase or play on words or common phrases and you twist something, [and] another one that i had for a very long time, I think i'd had this one for a couple of years, was 'the knife cuts both ways if the shoe fits walk in it till your high heels break.' Those are my favorite kind of things to do so if I think of one but I don't have a song at the moment I write it down and I keep a file of [it]. I also have a folder of favorite words, so it's, I have favorite phrases, favorite words, favorite lines that I think could just fit somewhere."

Swift: “Giving up doesn't always mean you're weak, sometimes you're just strong enough to let go.”

Swift: “I've had every part of my life dissected—my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music. When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it. And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off.”

Swift: “The lesson I've learned the most often in life is that you're always going to know more in the future than you know now.”