She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.

It was just an idea I had, that it could be cool to have a book covered in fake fur.

Nonfiction narratives are really powerful and valid in themselves. But one thing that you don't get sometimes from the more clinical or academic books or nonfiction books is that you don't get to hear the person's voice; you don't get them as individuals. You get a few quotes and you hear them as sort of a case study: numbers, examples, anecdotes, maybe a paragraph here, and that's about it.

I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often.

Now I'm in nonfiction. To me any given story has its appropriate form. There might be some story I get involved with that's begging to be a graphic novel, so that will have to be that way. There's always that matching of the content and the form, and that means everything to me. I spend years thinking about what that match is going to be before I can really make it work.

I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.