The possibility of bringing white-collar criminals to justice is ever receding over the horizon.

I love to sing. I'm a soprano.

I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and even painful to explore your own weakness, but it gives you genuine emotion. Characters in fiction come alive because of the believability of their emotional lives and that is what I strive to create.

I'm a grandmother, and a mighty proud one.

The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.

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.

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