For the past few months, we've all had some fun talking about Taylor Swift. Implying she was a lonely Confederate ghost stalking teenagers while waiting for her husband to return from The War; suggesting she was raised by chickens with country manners; alluding to the fact that through Taylor Swift's eyes, the world is a Lisa Frank-style Technicolor dreamscape where growing up means driving to the store to pick up your own candy for dinner.

What follows is a selection of quotes, all real, culled from two recent interviews given by Swift in promotion of her new album Red.

It seems, friends, we dreamed too hard. The Taylor Swift of our imagining has become the Taylor Swift that exists.

  • "I grew up on a Christmas tree farm."
  • "I didn't brush my hair and could mismatch my clothes."
  • "I'd run up to random people and sing Lion King songs."
  • "If I meet a person who is incredibly complex and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse."
  • "[The best person in my phone is] Gwyneth Paltrow."
  • "If there were someone who was a good person, I'm not going to write something bad about them."
  • "I'm looking at [my iPod]. I have, like, One Republic, Rihanna, Coldplay, that band Passenger. All kinds of stuff. The Sun. Jimmy Eat World."
  • "I wrote a song called "Mean" about a critic who hated me. It became an anthem against bullies in schools."
  • "When people say things about me empowering women, that's an amazing compliment. It's not necessarily what I thought I was doing…"
  • "Every five minutes there's a new blog about me..."
  • "Sometimes, I write about a scene I saw in a movie."
  • "See ya."

    [NYDN // The Sun // Image via Getty]