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

I'm at the atheist end of the agnostic spectrum.

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.

I went to college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in political science.

You have to be a ruthless editor of your own prose. Over the years, I've learned that the best way to incorporate research into the narrative is to turn it into action.

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

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.