I'm usually busy - if you call me at the house, I get about four phone calls there a year - I'm usually running around the house with a pen in my mouth holding onto something, folding it, or doing something to it, and it's always a bad time.

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.

I like people. Rightwingers don't. They like business, they don't care about people. I like education, they seem not to care much about it.

This sounds really corny, but I am a slave to my work, a workaholic, and glad of it. I like what I do; this is my place, my little universe, one of them.

I always found the Chicago audience to be a smart, fast-moving, violent and cheerful lot, and it's always good to be back.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

I'm mellower now, I'm over 50. But I don't think I'm too mellow. I'm still angry at a lot of things.