Elliot Spitzer is not ruling out a return to politics. He tells Fortune editor at large Peter Elkind, who has been writing a book about Spitzer for two years, in a recent interview that he has never said he wouldn't consider running again:

"I love politics," Spitzer told me on March 31. "The substance, the debate about the issues ..." As for a race in 2010? It is "just hard to see," he says. But he adds, "I've never said I would never consider running for office again."

This is not terribly surprising, but it is a development. The New York Post claimed in early September that Spitzer would make a comeback, and I speculated in October that he might run for New York comptroller after Spitzer penned an op-ed for Slate in October laying out a vision for how comptrollers can revamp corporate politics and DC lobbying by putting pressure on businesses to drop their affiliations with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

It's clear Spitzer loves politics. Whether or not he gets back in, and whether he does it anytime soon, is another question.