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

When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.

Everybody wanted me to be rich and famous on my art. And I said no to all the commercials and all the seedy offers.

Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.

I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion - not to become a criminal, but somehow. to be totally creating, you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free, and we know freedom is a hard thing to get.

I, like everybody else, have a certain fear of heights, and I have to be very careful when I am in the clouds, but it is also what I love; it is my domain, so when you love something, you don't have fear.

If you see how carefully I prepare for any kind of walk, legal or illegal, small or big, you will see that, actually, I narrow the unknown to virtually nothing. And that's when I am ready to walk on the wire.

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.

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.

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.

I am not up there by chance. I am there by choice. And I know the wire. And I know my limits. And I am a madman of details.

Faith is what replaces doubt in my dictionary.