Reba McEntire

I had lots of breaks.

Easter is very important to me, it’s a second chance.

For no. 1, it’s great writing, super writing. The second thing is that it’s great chemistry with all the actors. We just all got along from the very start. Very get-go, we all got along. We just – it was just like we were all meant to be there together.

For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.

You know, I get a lot of people pitching songs to me.

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.

[on Matthew McConaughey] He was always taking his shirt off, he’s like Yeah, here’s my deal, I’m hot.” We had a meeting one day at like 11 o’clock, right before the show and he walks into the meeting shirtless wearing this like old musty sarong… He doesn’t smell great, no.

I’m just incredibly fortunate that my eyes and ears have been opened. I have to be honest with myself and remove as much of the repetition and fakery as is humanly possible. To soothe the savage heart, we have to repeat ourselves sometimes – that’s entertainment.

[on Frank Sinatra] He was a compassionate guy. He loved to have fun. He had a movie theatre in his house. We munched on popcorn and watched movies together.

Oh, nerds!

What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.

I’m competitive with anyone who writes a good song – I don’t care if it’s a band or solo artist or whoever.

It’s a sport to me. I never want to get too complacent with my writing or my flow.

[On singing in Walk the Line] The director came to us and he said “No, I really want you guys to learn to sing. To learn to play instruments and I want you to record an album”. and that is what… and I just absolutely was just gob-smacked and I said .. “I don’t know. I can’t do that.” And he said “Well I want you to try.” Now that’s the thing for me. If someone asks me to try, I will always try.

People want to try and move you into a place where you can be easily identifiable by every woman in America – to be this very likable woman in a romantic comedy. And it’s really hard for me. I just don’t see myself as the girl that everybody likes. I never have been and I don’t know how to be that person.

My father’s name is Vernon, and my mother liked the initials double V, so she named my sisters Victoria and Valerie. That’s cool- except when the dogs start getting V names.

It’s strange, somebody asked for my autograph the other day. Because I finished school and I’m not really doing anything at the moment, I was just kind of aimlessly wandering around London and these two guys who were about 30 came up and asked for my autograph. I was really quite proud at the time, and they wanted to take photos and stuff. And then they were sort of wandering around and I was kind of wandering around and I bumped into them about three times, and every single time their respect for me kept growing and growing and growing.

[about the showbiz lifestyle] It’s all too much trouble for me. It’s probably because I’m fat and lazy and old.

I’ve always wanted to play Maria in West Side Story. My idol is Natalie Wood, and I love the movie, so I think a modern-day twist on it would be really neat.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it’s terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It’s a dying art, in a way.

Well, I think you and I have always felt the same way – that we’re Jewish but we can get away with just being exotic. We’re kind of Jews in disguise.