I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

I grew up in conservative rural Kansas in the 1950s when it was expected that girls would not have a life outside the home, so educating them was a waste of time

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

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 had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.