If I were elected President, the first thing I would do would be to set up a Department of Restoring the Bill of Rights. I would have 10,000 people working there.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.

The rich are different than you and me: they have more money and they have more power.

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

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

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

Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.