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RD: What were you thinking during the days after the attack?Giuliani: Many, many times I thought about my last conversation with my father, when he was dying of cancer. I wanted to know if he had ever been afraid during his life. He said, "I was always afraid." And then he said, "Courage is doing what you have to do even though you are afraid."
RD: That sounds like Churchill.
Giuliani: Then he added, "If you're not afraid at times, you're crazy."
RD: And that sounds like a guy from Brooklyn.
Giuliani: And I gave him a hug and gave him a kiss. My father probably had delivered that message about courage to me in other ways for the last ten years. But saying it that way right before he died had a very, very big impact on me. Since then, I've always understood that courage is about the management of fear, not the absence of fear.
RD: When you were diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago, what went through your mind?
Giuliani: It made me ask questions about life, death and mortality that ultimately helped me get through September 11. I concluded that everyone lives every day with the possibility of dying. People with cancer just confront it more dramatically.
RD: Were you ever as frightened?
Giuliani: No. No, no, no, no. Because it's lonely. You have to come to terms with a deadly disease. But during the time I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, incredible numbers of people died of all different things, including the awful tragedy of September 11. Getting cancer is just another way of having to deal with the human situation.
RD: Soon after you faced your own mortality, the public's response to your leadership on September 11 gave you a measure of immortality.
Giuliani: Right. But it's hard for me to accept that. Sometimes when people wave, yelling, "Rudy, way to go, Rudy," I say to myself, "Why are these people waving at me?"
RD: What do you make of the mass response to the tribute to victims at the Metropolitan Opera?
Giuliani: The head of the Met told me the company wanted to stage a benefit performance on September 22, and asked if I'd speak. When I arrived I realized they had put a giant TV screen in the plaza in front of the opera house, so the public could see the performance. But people were not going out then, so there was concern. If only five people showed up, that could send a counterproductive message: Everybody's scared. At intermission, I walked outside and there were thousands of people. That crystallized something for me. People weren't going out -- but not because of fear. They were mourning.
RD: And you got a standing ovation that went on for five minutes.
Giuliani: Almost as long as Caruso and Pl´cido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti -- but never as long [laughing]. It was a great experience, like the wedding ("Arm-in-Arm in an Aisle of Joy"). Those events helped me see that the beautiful things in life have to go on. Otherwise, the terrorists win.
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