I was mad about the theatre growing up, really mad. We had a local theatre, the Torch, and I used to usher there. I would see the shows over and over again.

I'm interested in stories that aren't getting told: it's where my interests lie.

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

I've ended up feeling fonder of 'The Paying Guests' than of any of my other novels.

In 1978, I entered the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I would have loved to study videogame programming, but nobody was teaching it then. So I went to classes on engineering and early computer science.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

I've been very engaged in Illinois and Chicago civic activities for a long time; mostly around building businesses and helping entrepreneurs grow companies, but also around education and education reform.