Obsessed people are not humorless at all.

In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog.

Wire-walking in performance is one thing - I never fell, of course. If I had, I wouldn't be here talking about it.

I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere - I'm indestructible.

Notre Dame and Sydney - that was nothing. Notre Dame doesn't have a police station; it is not 1,000 or so feet high. It was a public structure, very easy to access. And Sydney Harbour Bridge was half-and-half: a bridge, in the middle of the night. The World Trade Center was the end of the world. Electronic devices, police dogs.

I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.

My time is always divided when I prepare for a wire walk. First I dream, technically and artistically, and then I go to work, and I am the master rigger, climbing trees and ladders and constructing. Only then I change my cap and become the performer.

I will never fall prey to celebrity because I am too busy. I have other things to do than look at myself in the mirror.

When you are a young person, the world is yours. You can do the impossible.

If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion.

It's part of my life to feel like a criminal, to have eyes in my back and see if I'm being followed. It's a feeling that comes from street juggling because I have been arrested so many times.

I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.

I was thrown out of different schools because I was practicing my arts - magic, juggling, and the high wire.

What I think tailors the creativity of most people are the rules that we learn from the age we are very small - in school, our parents.

Right after my Twin Towers walk, I was approached by hundreds of people, and I said no to all the offers. I could have become a millionaire overnight, obviously, but I said no, and I continue to be uninterested.

I've been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.

It's very normal - when you're not used to the world of the high wire, it's very normal to be simply terrified. The reason I'm not is because I've done it for so many years.

Usually, when I walk on a wire, I inspect the anchor point on both sides before crossing.

I have a fear of water, believe it or not. To put a wire 12 feet over a swimming pool frightens me. I don't like water.

Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.

I did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

I started making monkey bridges, like kids do, and climbing and rappelling with ropes. Very naturally, I needed some knots. At the very beginning, I didn't care, I didn't know, and then slowly I started to know, and I started to care. I wanted to know more knots or the right knot for the special action.

I have been performing in the street for more than 50 years: magic for basically 60 years, and the high wire 45 years. The beauty of it is that it's never the same. It's never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy.

To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.