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

No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship

The crime novel has always been my favourite genre.

The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.

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

When I tell people I was in the St. Justin Martyr parish, if they are native Chicagoans they know exactly where I was and what that was like. The Sunday before this particular march, the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cody, had required all of his pastors to read a letter in support of open housing and economic justice in every parish in the city.

Heart surgeons do not have the world's smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world's three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two.