In Chicago, we love our crooks!

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.