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

I guess I don't have a candidate who makes my heart go pitter-patter the way I wish it would. I'm thinking, here's an African American candidate - yes! And here's a woman candidate - yes! Why can't I get behind either one of them? Don't tell me I have latent sexism or racism that I need to confront. I don't believe that. I think we are so burned by the current situation that we want somebody that it isn't possible to have. We want someone who definitely looks like the messiah.

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.

Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.

Never underestimate a man's ability to underestimate a woman.

These events are swirling around them. In the white community, people felt like they had no control over their neighborhoods, their destiny. In the black community, centuries of government and economic forces were pushing on them. I went in with a kind of arrogance, maybe, that came from living in a very intellectual family, and I left knowing that there was a lot about the way people lived that I didn't know about.

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