“Even so, looking back now, I realize how much I owe to my boredom. Drowning in it, I came face to face with myself as if in a mirror. I became a spectator of my own existence, which by turns struck me as being either too real or totally unreal. I recall one day being absolutely sure that time had stopped, despite the loud ticking of the clock in my room. Everything stood still. Walking through a museum, years later, I recalled that moment in my room as I passed the statues of Greek and Egyptian gods. They looked to me as bored as I had been.”

—Charles Simic, “A Reunion with Boredom,” New York Review of Books, 8.31.2011

[photo of Antikythera Youth at the National Archaeological Museum at Athens, by Dimitris Agelakis]