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

Sometimes life seems so painful it hurts even to move my arms.

I look at the great poets of the Soviet Union, like Anna Akhmatova, who endured far worse then anything we've seen or hopefully that we will ever see. If they could keep writing and keep a voice alive, keep people hopeful through their poetry, then I would be ashamed to stop and to give in. It would be really self-indulgent, unacceptable, and inexcusable to walk away from it.

Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.

I have one vivid memory of one of the days that the marches were taking place. We were in a Catholic, predominantly Polish and Lithuanian neighborhood. Chicago is a place where people define themselves by their parish and by their ethnicity.

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

Sometimes I think I'm a one-trick pony because I'm not very inventive about new ways of telling stories.