Philippe Petit, just shy of his 60th birthday, still has a twinkle in his eye, still trains three hours a day, and — remarkably — is still wire-walking. Unlike every other interviewer who's met Petit, I did not ask him if he was scared when he did the WTC walk, on the assumption that a scared person wouldn't do it in the first place. I did, however, plan to ask Petit to assess his sanity; he beat me to it, though, boldly declaring: "I am a madman."

OK, so it's a week, a month, maybe a year after the WTC walk; was there a point where you thought, "Oh God. What do I do next?"

No, no. If I were a different man, someone who wanted to run and scream "I did it! I'm the greatest! I want to make money, be famous!" then after the WTC I would have killed myself because there was nothing bigger! But I am the opposite of this person. I don't care about the greatest, the biggest; I don't care about money. What interests me is to try and do something beautiful. I have done giant things, but it is wrong to think I collect "gigantism." I've done some very small performances that to me are the equal of this in artistic quality.