I love New York, but I'd felt like an outsider here.

I hope for the experience of people standing together, turning their backs to the city and facing this, and hearing the leaves rustle. Well, maybe it won't be as bucolic as at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but I know you will feel removed from the city.

I think my desire to imagine a future for this site came out of trying to come to terms with the emotions that day aroused.

It sounds really over the top to say you're responsible for the city of New York, but I do feel responsibility to the city of New York, to this country, to people everywhere. So many people were affected by the events of September 11, and I feel this is one of the ways that that event will be understood and defined.

PERFORMING TRIBUTE 9/11 shows the heroism of people who have chosen to respond to devastation and hatred with quiet determination and a belief that they can and will make the world a better place.

For two years nobody talked about anything other than the name arrangement. There was no fund-raising and no progress being made on construction and design.

New York was a place I wanted to live and work all along. If I wasn't going to live in Israel, I had to live in New York.