Blake on Gwen

• On Gwen's reaction to his divorce [6]: "I won't forget that day. I looked over at Gwen — who I didn't really know — and she had these huge tears in her eyes. I thought, 'Wow, she feels super bad for me!' . . . I thought it was going to be another one of those things-are-going-to-be-OK talks. She didn't tell me much, because we didn't know each other at the time, but she said, 'I'm going through something very similar to what you're going through. I understand. And I hate it.'"
• On how the conversation started everything [7]: "That's kind of how our friendship and bond started, that day. It went from that, to checking in on each other once a week through email — 'This sh*t happened to me, what happened to you?' — to maybe three times a week, then every day, to 'Hey, here's my phone number if you ever want to text.' Next thing I know, I wake up and she's all I care about, and I'm wondering if she feels the same about me."
• On her "Used to Love You" song [8]: "Right when she wrote the song, she was like, 'My gosh, I put exactly what I wanted to say into a song.' Sometimes it's hard to put it exactly how you want to say it when it's that personal to you, and so she was so excited that she got that out, and then it ends up being this smash song that it's turning into."
• On how Gwen saved his life [9]: "Gwen saved my life. Who else on earth could understand going through a high-profile divorce from another musician? You can't even imagine the similarities in our divorces."

• On his feelings toward Gwen [10]: "Here is No Doubt. I like those . . . those guys a lot. One of 'em a lot."
• On the "best present" he's ever gotten Gwen [11]: "We got her horse, and I got myself a horse at the same time. Gwen, she loves riding and she loves horses. It's actually so funny that people are so shocked by that, but if you can name me one girl on the planet that doesn't love horses or just think that they are beautiful . . . "
• On how their relationship came to be [12]: "It's not something that anybody could have seen coming, besides God, I guess. It doesn't look like it would make sense, you know? But all I can tell you is, it does. It just makes the most perfect sense for us and where we're at in our lives. I tell people all the time, 'Gwen saved my life last year.' She did, and I think she would probably tell you something similar about me."

• Ontheir "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" duet [13]: "It was odd because we wrote the song last Fall sometime. I started the song just because I was trying to impress her. I sent it to her on voice memo on her phone, and I like just texted it to her, and I said, 'Here's something I was writing, I was thinking about everything.' It was only half done and she wrote the next verse of the song and sent it back to me a couple of days later."
• On how Gwen changed his life [14]: "When my marriage fell apart, and then trying to pick the pieces up from being at rock bottom and trying to move forward, next thing you know, there's this person that I kind of knew, that I worked with on [The Voice] and then all of a sudden, to find out she's going through the same exact thing at the same time. And this is how my life turned around and so quickly too, by the way, like, all of this has to be meant to happen. So I made a record about it."

Gwen on Blake

• On how Blake got her through her dramatic year [15] in 2015: "When you're going through a really tough time, there are people that come in your life, like a friend that can help you get through things, and he's definitely one of those people. That's it."
• On her song "Make Me Like You" being about Blake [16]: "I will admit that that song is about that guy, yeah."
• On her feelings toward him [17]: "I love you, too, Blake. Ish."

• On what she thinks of him [18]: "I think he's hot. Don't you?"
• On their "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" duet [19]: "I wrote the bulk of it in eight weeks. What happened was, the story is, that he had written the song and sent it to me on my phone. I was scared to listen to it. I was like, 'What if I don't like it?' and I listened to it and I'm like, 'Oh my God, I love this.' He said, 'Write the rest of it.' It was a time when I was really insecure about writing."
• On what it was like to collaborate with him [20]: "Anytime I've ever collaborated with anyone, it's always my favorite, but to do something with him, because he's so talented and comes from such a different world, to make music together, it was just so shocking! So amazing to do it live and share it with everybody."

• On how they made it through their divorces together [21]: "[Backstage on the set of The Voice] Blake was like, 'Everybody, before we go out there, I want to let everyone know that by the time this airs, I will be divorced.' It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time and then everything flipped. It went from horrible to, like, hopeful and like, 'Wow, God, you just don't know what's gonna happen next.'"
• On Blake's reign as People's Sexiest Man Alive [22]: "He got sexier. It just keeps getting better and cuter and more country."