What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.
I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.
Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt
Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars.
In all my work there's this notion of the melancholic. You can make a photograph about the sublime, but you can't make the sublime itself.
There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.
There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.
A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts.
I am a huge Sublime fan, and I think their music immediately puts you in SoCal when you listen to it.
A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.
People always think I just focus on rap, but I listen to every type of music. If I like a song it don't matter what genre of music it is. I might listen to Duran Duran, I might listen to Sublime, maybe Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
Without artists, the sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed.