Architecture begins where engineering ends.

If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.

I'm all about entertaining and keeping a reader on the edge of their seat, so to me, the social issues have to be meaningful and give the book what's really 'at stake,' but ultimately it's not about them - it's always a personal story of everyday people thrust into life-threatening situations and having to perform heroic acts.

One novel that I think is an overriding influence in my life is 'All the King's Men,' the most beautiful book written in the U.S.

As for suspense, I like to write books that draw you into the hero's plight from the opening pages, where people put their lives on the line for something - a belief, a family member, the truth.

'Blind Curve,' the book I'm working on now, sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story, the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew, a troubled kid, who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than, ahem, Charles Manson!

I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.

Both from the standpoint of stocks and bonds, an investor wants to go where the growth is.

Companies typically borrow money at less than their return on equity and therefore compound their return at the expense of lenders.

Ex-Fidelity mutual fund manager Peter Lynch was certainly brilliant in one respect: he knew to get out when the gettin' was good.

Human nature means that institutions at some point lose their sense of mission. That sense of vulnerability drives Pimco.

I am tough but I have a soft side.

If financial assets no longer work for you at a rate far and above the rate of true wealth creation, then you must work longer for your money.

In terms of economic growth, PIMCO originated the famous phrase the 'new normal.'

It's sort of like a teeter-totter; when interest rates go down, prices go up.

Slow growth and inflation have a tendency to accompany large deficits and increasing debt as a percentage of GDP.