Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic was designed, the emphasis was placed on surviving a head-on collision.

I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.

An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

Everyone always helped me out growing up, and everyone now supports me Sunday. So whenever there's a chance to give back, to the community, to the less fortunate kids so they have the opportunity to gain the most potential they can in their life to be success, it's always good to do.

If you've been fortunate enough to have some success in business, I think it's important to put something back.

If you look at the average age of a company on the Dow Jones index, it's something like 35 years or younger. In other words... success is no indication of longevity.

I try really hard not to be attached to success.