In Long Island, people care about how much money you have. Even I did when I was growing up. I never wanted kids to see my mom's house because I was embarrassed that they'd tell everyone, 'Oh, Madison's mom is poor!' And she was definitely far from poor.

I truly believe that diversity is so important, and I hope that I can use my platform to encourage and inspire other aspiring female artists.

It's important to drive your own ship, and it's your career, so you might as well take it by the reins.

I'm very much focused on my career.

I love music videos, I really do. I think it's kind of sad that it's a dying art form.

For notes related to books I'm writing, I've wondered whether I should organize my notes better, but I do find that the action or scrolling through them and seeing odd juxtapositions of ideas helps to stimulate my own ideas and creativity. I worry that if I kept the notes in a highly-structured way, I might lose some of these benefits.

There were moments in 'Malala,' I felt very moved by the storytelling, and 'pleased' would be the wrong word, but the music could be part of what moved me: that I was trying to contribute to something that was meaningful outside the realm of creative work but just more in terms of the world.

In general, a writer would like to think that the best book that he has written is the book that he is writing, and the next book will be even better. Maybe if this is not true, it is very useful to keep the illusion alive.