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.
Sara ParetskyI went to college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in political science.
Sara ParetskyMy parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.
Sara ParetskyI have one vivid memory of one of the days that the marches were taking place. We were in a Catholic, predominantly Polish and Lithuanian neighborhood. Chicago is a place where people define themselves by their parish and by their ethnicity.
Sara ParetskyI guess I don't have a candidate who makes my heart go pitter-patter the way I wish it would. I'm thinking, here's an African American candidate - yes! And here's a woman candidate - yes! Why can't I get behind either one of them? Don't tell me I have latent sexism or racism that I need to confront. I don't believe that. I think we are so burned by the current situation that we want somebody that it isn't possible to have. We want someone who definitely looks like the messiah.
Sara Paretsky