I Had Wanted To Write Ghost Country

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.

When I Tell People I Was In The St. Justin Martyr Parish, If They Are Native Chicagoans They Know Exactly Where I Was And What That Was Like. The Sunday Before This Particular March, The Archbishop Of Chicago, Cardinal Cody, Had Required All Of His Pastors To Read A Letter In Support Of Open Housing And Economic Justice In Every Parish In The City.

I Admire About Hillary: Every Time I Am Going To Walk Away From Her Candidacy, I Think, She Has Absorbed More Hate Than Anyone I Can Think Of Over The Past Twenty Years, And She Hasn't Cracked Under It. That's A Kind Of Iron Fortitude That Maybe We Need In The President Of The United States. People Project On To Hillary Because She Is A Woman. They Either Hate Her For Everything They Hate About Women Or They Long For Her To Be Everything They Want In A Woman. It's An Impossible Burden.

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.

It's Hard For Me To Believe That Just My Words On The Page Are Enough. I Ought To Be Out Physically Keeping Abortion Safe And Legal, Restoring The Fourth Amendment, Getting Clean Water Back Into Kentucky Since The Bush Administration Has Allowed Strip Miners To Fill It All Up With Slag. The List Is Endless. Bring It Down. Make It Small. Make It One Thing That You Can Do. It's Very Hard For Me To Remember That.