The bones of my architecture are very much related to the structure, to the physical fact of how a building can stand up; it's also related to geometry and a certain understanding of the architecture in which there is a balance between expression and function.

I think it is important to build for people, and to deliver this message of hope: through good construction and a certain sense of progression, a better understanding of each other can be achieved.

The best is to go into a train station that I've built and buy a ticket. The guy in the ticket booth might recognize me, which is a marvelous feeling, but it might be that he doesn't and I go in like any other passenger, except that I enter with a critical eye, looking to see how it's held up.

You could say that I had become possessed, in the classical sense, by the art of the great architects of the past. And that led me to engineering.

It's a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur's metric for success. It's not, and nor should it be.

Success is so bad for everybody, period. Especially a certain kind of success, when people practically give up their identity. They forget who they are, how they are.

I think that when I was younger and had my first round of big success and was plastered on magazine covers in the early and mid-'90s, I was kind of outspoken and had kind of a pretty aggressive attitude in my life.

I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author.