I felt like when I got with Kanye, and we discussed me being on G.O.O.D. Music, he just really took me to a place in regards to music that I love and music that I had made previously. We had a clear understanding of what I wanted to make, and he just seemed like he was an advocate for hardcore, uncompromising hip-hop.
Some years ago, I read Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, and I was very taken by the way he told the story, and it seemed as though I was right in the middle of things. And it took me a while to figure out how he achieved that effect, and one of the ways was to write it in the present tense.
The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as a relatively young man of 39 and seemed always to be ill. He was 'high-strung' - intensely neurotic - yet a charismatic personality nonetheless.
If you take a band like Nirvana, their biggest hits are structurally the same as even a hair metal band's biggest hits. The structure's not different - the attitude was different. Except it really wasn't. It seemed a little more human.
School and I never seemed to walk hand in hand.
My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.
I didn't find it difficult to live in the 'Inherent Vice' world or play those scenes, because they just seemed so real.
If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.
The more I learned about real pirates, the more exciting they seemed to me. They appeared to be even more dramatic than pirates of the movies or TV shows.
It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?
Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.
I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.
When I was bald, I went through a period where I seemed to do nothing except TV programmes about being bald.
When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school World Studies class, I dismissed it out of hand. This was during the hedonistic days of the late '60s, and this spiritual path seemed so grim with its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure.
When Facebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project.
Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era.
Growing up in the '70s and '80s when my dad had an art gallery, one of the things that frustrated me was the world seemed so tiny, and to appreciate contemporary art, you needed a history of art, a formal education. I was more interested in the people, and that's why I went into the movie business in the first place.
My very first products were hand-made, one-of-a-kind pins. When I finally realized I could repeat a phrase to make multiples, 'intellectuals gone bad,' a fairly succinct description of my own life, seemed appropriate.
I was like, 'Man, bluegrass - that's like Roy Clark playing banjo on 'Hee Haw.' I'm a huge 'Hee Haw' fan. But I didn't know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people's music.
In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense.
I've always been good about interfacing with machines. But that never seemed like a gateway to being able to make music. I never made the connection that music could be made with machines - that was what drum and bass was for me.
I started out doing triathlons because they terrified me! I'm a good swimmer, I learned to ride a bike in college, and I hate running. It seemed like something I could never do, so I decided, 'I'm gonna do it.'
I always sort of swooned at the sight of the classic barn structures in central and northern Minnesota, where everything seemed rustic and weathered and made to age gracefully.
In 2007, Lindsay Lohan seemed to be on top of the world, a bona fide star who had her pick of acting gigs. But it wasn't long before the veneer cracked, and Lindsay's life began to shatter.
I always loved the look of musicians. I've always admired them because they have a look - when I was growing up, it seemed that the ones I liked didn't need to have a stylist.
We had seen the way the print industry had been disrupted; we'd seen how the audio industry got disrupted, so it just seemed like a natural progression that video was next. We thought we were late to the game in 2003.
To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.
Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.
Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A.; if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.
I had no inclination to perform as a kid. I was a shy child - I always had my nose in a library book. I didn't start acting until I went to college. Once I started, it seemed to fit like a glove. I felt completely at home on stage. It was the perfect way for me to express myself, even better than writing.
The Rolling Stones seemed very loose and wild, but when you read about them, you realize that everything they did is very deliberate.
In Britain, the major public holiday used to be Guy Fawkes Day... that was celebrated on November 5th with things like bonfires and fireworks... I think that made Halloween seem preferable. The idea of having pumpkins and costumes and parties seemed much more appealing than burning down your neighborhood.
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
I used to say that I didn't want anything to do with e-mail. It seemed really impersonal, complicated and weird. I had no idea what an amazing way it is to reach people.
When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.
I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black, and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.
