I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Place has always been important to me, and one thing today's Chicago exudes, as it did in 1893, is a sense of place. I fell in love with the city, the people I encountered, and above all the lake and its moods, which shift so readily from season to season, day to day, even hour to hour.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.