We have spent hours of our lives watching her. And trusting her. We have marveled at her courage and curiosity. Diane Sawyer believes "being safe is the enemy of everything" and that great experience takes place at the edge of your competence. "Because," she says, "in that beautiful anxiety is an air pocket of what you've always done and what you might do; that is your creative life."

She began her career as a Kentucky beauty queen and took over ABC World News three years ago, at age 64. When I asked her if I could print that, she laughed and said, "Print it," because Diane Sawyer has things to concern herself with other than being coy about her age. Yet one of our most trusted journalists wears running shoes and sweats to work, hoping she will get that workout in. She knows myriad versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and has been happily married to director Mike Nichols for 25 years. She saved a note that her mother wrote to her after hearing about Nichols's film The Graduate, saying she'd heard that "it changes the way you think." There is no doubt that Sawyer has inspired countless others to change the way they think.

RITA WILSON: Who have you always wanted to interview?

DIANE SAWYER: The pope—either the outgoing or the incoming.

RW: Oh, that's good.

DS: I feel I will not get that interview.

RW: Is that your intuition?

DS: That's my...[laughs] certainty.

RW: You've interviewed people from Ahmadinejad to Obama, Britney Spears to Castro. Was there a story that you felt most affected by?

DS: It's always the last one. Going in, I always think, Well, this is going to be difficult, or this is going to be something that I have to construct. And then I go in and it happens, and it's outside of everything you prepare for.

RW: Can you give an example?

DS: I think when Whitney Houston was doing that somewhat famous interview, she was learning—she was saying it for the first time.

RW: "Crack is whack."

DS: And in a much more profound way, the teacher I interviewed right after [the massacre in] Newtown. She started talking, and she hadn't talked about what had happened to her that day, about being in the bathroom with the 15 children, stacking them on top of each other and telling them she loved them, because she wanted those to be the last words they heard—if they were the last words. And you could see her discovering what it was that had happened as she was talking....

RW: That's one I still can't shake.

DS: That was punishingly hard. And it's not about me, and it was not about us, but simply to be there, where it's pitched way past grief. It's as tough as it gets. That's from a poem, by the way. "Pitched past the pitch of grief." That's not me; it's Gerard Manley Hopkins.

RW: I love it. You've done some tough emotional pieces. How do you brace yourself for emotionally trying topics?

DS: You know, I always assume that they want something to change or they wouldn't be talking. That lifts the burden. The story's there for the purpose they want it to serve, and I'm listening for that. What's going to give it meaning is how their words change the way people feel or act.

RW: Have you ever taken the toll of an interview home with you?

DS: Lots of times. When you come back from overseas, and you see the immensity of the suffering, and you realize that you're just one story, and that no matter how you try to fire it like a rocket into the world, it is not going to change what they'll wake up to tomorrow. It can take days before you rally emotionally.

RW: But after an interview like Gabby Giffords?

DS: Well, you've seen her. Somebody wrote me this beautiful note that said, "Whatever part of the brain controls the human spirit, the bullet missed." And Jaycee Dugard—her courage! Her little flower planted in that backyard for all those years. Looking at the moon, with the absolute certainty that her mother was on the other side looking at the moon too. How can you not come back and believe that human beings are capable of infinite wonder and bravery?

RW: Speaking of Jaycee Dugard and her incredible intuition, are there any instances where your own intuition has been dead-on?

DS: Well...meeting Mike.

RW: Did you know when you met him?

DS: I just—I knew before he spoke, I knew before he was walking across the room. I knew something was happening [laughs], and maybe it's that beautiful hallmark. Cue the violins? But I knew life was changing.

RW: When you started in politics, you worked in the Nixon administration, and now you're looking at Washington from the other side of the lens. How has the political landscape changed since you were there?

DS: The big change is that it's not just 24 hours anymore. It's the nanosecond coverage of everything, and that they've got to jump faster than people can think and try to answer things like Pac-Man is coming their way. I remember Robert Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, and the 13 days they had to ponder what they were going to do. Can you imagine having 13 days anymore?

RW: No. You really don't have time to think. But you're good on your feet, Diane! You once said that being a beauty queen taught you to think on your feet—and I loved that, because I don't have that quality at all.

DS: It's just a muscle, you know? It's the muscle that says, "Say what you think you think," and worry later about all of its accommodations, because what you think you think is often truer than what comes from the composition. Now, mind you, it can also get you thrown off television!

RW: [Laughs] Do you view yourself as a role model for women?

DS: I don't think that way. I hope that some longevity will be a signal to men and women. I love women in the workplace; I love seeing women in television news accumulate all of this strength, and muscle, and power. And I love the men wanting to go home and be with their families at night. But I think a certain kind of stamina is central for everyone starting out. In January we saw Hillary Clinton, at the end of this tenure, go up and kick some ass, and be indignant at the sense of perspective and proportion and posturing that she has to live with. The questions may be good, but we know the difference between questioning and posturing [laughs], and to see that reaction—it was a warrior moment.

RW: You're so incredibly respected—I'm sure this doesn't happen the way it does for some people—but have you ever been insulted in an interview?

DS: No. No one can insult me in interviews. But people have certainly said things. Ahmadinejad, for example, said I should be asking him about romance and not what I was asking about....

RW: [Gasps] Did he say that?

DS: Yes, he did. [Laughs] And Admiral Rickover, founder of the nuclear navy, said, "It's not that I'm so smart; it's that you're so dumb." So part of that just gets my pulse revved. My job is to be able to handle what's thrown at me in interviews. In life, though, it happens much more than people expect. I think that we're all walking around with our shirts buttoned up high so people don't see the bruises.

RW: That is so true.

DS: But the thing that amazes me, the more I live, is how little of what you perceive is intended. So you want forever to be exploring—to be as wise as you can be about what was intended, before you react. I've never understood that phrase "Nothing is personal." I've heard Oprah say it, and I try really hard to understand it, but so much feels personal.

RW: Yeah.

DS: And I wonder if what it's about is giving people a chance to be on your side. I remember Mike said to me, after our first argument, "Well, I know you're fair, I know you love me, so I have to consider the possibility that you're right."

RW: Oooooh, that's so good. I love that.

DS: That, in most of our lives, will apply: Well, I know I have to consider the possibility that you're right.

RW: What did you think about the faux controversy of your election-night spirit, and how do you deal with being in the limelight, for better or worse?

DS: I laughed, believe me. Thirty years on television. ?... I really laughed.

RW: Do you think that journalists are held to unfair standards?

DW: We're all in a world where these viral events can skew, or seem to skew, an entire career. And we're better than that; we all know better than that, and it's awful to see the politicians, the people running for office, so paralyzed with caution, because caution is also the enemy of vitality.

RW: I agree.

DS: People should be able to tell a joke that lands badly [laughs] without it having to be a five-day referendum on their character.

RW: What's the most nerve-racking part of your job?

DS: Probably the unrelenting nature of most days. We live in a simultaneous world of the stories that we're reporting for six months, and the stories that come across the wire where you have to jump, so you're living in three dimensions, and it doesn't stop—which is also the most wonderful part of the day. It's adrenalizing, and adrenaline is addicting, and that's why we're there—we like it, we need it, we want to know.

RW: That is true.

DS: So it's stressful, but I think stress with possibilities and hope has a different effect on the body than stress from being trapped or in despair.

RW: Yes.

DS: Stress is a form of daring. Look at the longest-lived people you know. They are two kinds—they are the people who live in the village that has no telephone, and the people who've been out there every day, pushing forward. I don't think we know the final verdict on stress in the body.

RW: I read somewhere that you love sad songs. Why is that?

DS: I have no idea.

RW: What do they do to you physically?

DS: They...make the world less abrasive. They cure human loneliness. They quiet your anxieties. All that bouncy, let's-have-fun music makes me anxious! [Laughs] I've always wondered in part if it was high school and being so tall and so weird— still weird, somewhat less tall. But whether it was not having dates the way people had dates or boyfriends the way people had boyfriends, maybe that's where I found my sanctuary.

RW: Do you have any kind of preshow tradition?

DS: No. I have a hair-and-makeup team that's been with me for years, and a wardrobe person. She comes in and says, "You have tomato juice on your shirt; I'm getting you a new shirt."

RW: [Laughs] Let's talk about your wardrobe.

DS: As you know, my clothes sense is basically, as Gilda Radner said, What's the least itchy?

RW: I cannot agree with you—you have extraordinary style! You've been named and listed on lists.... Do you have a uniform that works for you?

DS: You are looking at it.

RW: Okay, so black shirt and black pants?

DS: Black jeans, black shirt. It's one of the great joys: uncomplicating your life. If you want to keep the propulsion, you can't have all that complication anymore. You've gotta be like an arrow. And you realize that the greatest power comes from being—feeling the most like yourself.

RW: If you had not become a journalist, what would you have done?

DS: I used to think I would teach, but I'm not sure anymore. I think I would probably still be wandering the world and looking for answers. I wouldn't be harnessed to anything the way I am now, but I would be out there asking questions.

RW: You probably did that as a kid, didn't you?

DS: Yes. I also loved getting lost as a kid.

RW: Really?

DS: Still do—and I have a facility for it [laughs], which is nice. I love to go into a city and get completely lost.

RW: Physically lost?

DS: Physically lost. I have done it my whole life—go out there and just see what happens.

CLICK THROUGH TO SEE THE SLIDE SHOW.

Pictured above: Dress, $3,950, Tom Ford, 212-359-0300. Earrings, $4,000, Bulgari, bulgari.com.