NYM: Aside from politics and policy, what are your intellectual interests and passions? Who's your favorite novelist? What about art? Or music?

HRC: Wow pauses. How much time do we have? I have fairly catholic tastes. I'm very interested in archaeology. And I'm interested in prehistory as well as what we think of as the periods of history that there's a record of.

One of the highlights of my last seven years in the White House was on my first African trip, when I went to East Africa, the Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakeys made a lot of their discoveries, and walked the gorge with some of the paleoanthropologists and archaeologists who worked there, and just talked about the transition to Homo sapiens and then to historic man. I was in a rain forest in Australia, and Bill and I were being guided around by an aboriginal guide. We're walking through this rain forest, and he was saying things like, "You see that tree over there? The bark of that tree, if you boil it, and then you leave the pulp in the sun, it cures gangrene, our people tell us." There were so many examples of that. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, modern man has no understanding of what we owe to the people of the last million years. Because we're so impressed with ourselves and what we've learned in the last hundred years, especially with the speed of knowledge and the Internet. But think how many generations it took to figure out what you boiled and put in the sun to cure a dread disease.

NYM: And that's from college, or --

"I carry a very heavy responsibility. I'm not the usual Senate candidate, for better or worse. I don't want anything I say or do to feed into the kind of, ah, climate in which people engage in insults."

HRC: No, it's just been an interest of mine. I subscribe to Archaeology magazine because I love reading about it. So going to Egypt was a lifelong desire of mine, to be able to go and see the tombs and be guided around by Egyptologists who've spent their lives studying this. If I were to have an interest that I were to go back to school and study and think about and spend time on, or go on an archaeological dig, that would be at the top of my list.

Also, I really love art of all kinds. One of the things I'm happiest about in my time at the White House is that I was able to bring twentieth-century American art and sculpture to the White House, which has always been a particular love of mine. The de Kooning family lent us a big piece for the second floor of the White House. We added a Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American artist in the collection, and we added an O'Keeffe in the permanent collection. And I started a sculpture exhibition in what's called the First Lady's Garden. Bill and I had our first date at the Yale University Art Museum in New Haven. We've always loved modern sculpture.

And I like a lot of modern Expressionist and abstract work. But as I say, I'm very catholic. Literature, I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky. As I get older, I appreciate Shakespeare even more. I like Thomas Hardy; I like Dickens. Most recently, I've been reading a lot of American literature, particularly modern works by women. I think the best book I read last year was The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought that was brilliant.

NYM: Have you had a chance, on the subject of art, to go to the Met or moma?

HRC: When I was a private citizen, I used to go all the time. The Stanhope is now a very fancy place, but back in the early eighties, it was not yet there. And it was in a pretty great location, right across from the Met. I used to go and stay there all the time. It was inexpensive, if you can believe it, very friendly, and there was an Irish-American bellman by the name of Pat who used to greet me. And I felt very much at home there. Toward the end of the eighties, it was taken over, and it was gentrified and really made into a beautiful place. The last time I went there, Pat met me, and he said to me, 'Ah, Mrs. Clinton, this place will no longer be for the likes of us.' " Laughs.

NYM: Because New Yorkers love people who love New York, you know, why can't you just sort of stop the car and go into Saks or something?

HRC: Well, because I'm mobbed. I went to the supermarket in Chappaqua, which is, you know, hardly a heavily populated area, and I could not get up and down the aisles. I loved it. I talked with a lot of people, and they came up and asked me questions and said things to me. I can't seem to get anywhere without drawing so much attention that I can't really do what I came to do. I suppose I could go to the theater, because the lights go out. But I don't know how to do this. I'm having a really hard time. I find that people are really interested in talking to me. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get back and do some of the things that I like to do. What's ironic is that if I go someplace with my husband, who obviously travels with a huge entourage, he draws all the attention, so I can kind of go and look at things or visit with people and feel like I'm actually out there enjoying the experience. But now that I do it on my own, I find that people are really interested in talking to me and seeing me, and wish me well and ask me questions. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get back and do some of the things that I like to do.

NYM: Any plans for your husband to come up anytime soon?

HRC: There aren't any plans right now. We have a long way to go between now and the election, but I do anticipate him campaigning for me.

NYM: I was thinking about the way the vice-president took pains to distance himself from the president. Do you feel that you have to do anything like that?

HRC: You know, I think my job is to demonstrate my own record and qualifications, but I'm also very proud of the record and progress the administration has made. I say that in nearly every speech I make. We've done a lot of things I'd like to see continued, and there are other areas I'd like to work on that have not been as high a priority up until now. It's important for people to know what I'd do, but I don't see that that's in any way inconsistent with having been supportive of what the president has done.

NYM: What did you least expect about New York that you've found? What has surprised you most, or taken you aback?

HRC: I don't know that I'm surprised by anything yet. I was always told it was the toughest political atmosphere in the country. I think that's right. I don't think that's a surprise. People offer me their opinion at the drop of a hat, but by and large, I feel very welcome, and very much at home.

NYM: How would you compare this press corps to Washington's? You've had a pretty tough time of it so far.

HRC: But I don't view it as tough times as much as I've had to learn how to be a candidate. I don't think the press here -- with maybe one or two exceptions, as we know laughing -- I don't think it's been unusually tough on me. I think it's just got a certain way of doing business with the people that it covers. And I've had to learn, as I said when I started on Senator Moynihan's farm, how to be a candidate. I had to learn from my own mistakes. All in all, I think the press has been pretty fair to me.