This was a very progressive group of clergy who foresaw the race riots that were going to take place when Dr. King started helping the local civil rights community push for open housing. They were sort of hoping against hope that we could educate kids in a way that could counter some of the racist messages they were imbibing at home. I don't know whether we did any good, but it changed my life in every single way.

I wish I could remember where I put things. I spend half my life looking for my keys. With the other half I look for my glasses.

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.

I had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

Capo, my first golden retriever, so loved to swim she once jumped off a cliff to get into Lake Superior.

Rule number something or other -- never tell anybody anything unless you're going to get something better in return.