If you're born lucky, you don't have to be good.

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.

The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.

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.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing.

If you're born lucky, you don't have to be good.

Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.