• To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression.

    —Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

  • “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

    Nausea
    Jean-Paul Sartre

  • Better to go back to the studio in Via Margutta, where despair expressed itself, at least, in the empty canvas upon which I would never paint.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • It was true that nothing had changed, but I was again going to find myself face to face with despair, with the same despair, also unchanged, that had formerly made me run away.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • Thus I felt that I did not want to see people nor yet to be alone; that I did not want to stay at home nor yet to go out; that I did not want to travel nor yet to go on living in Rome; that I did not want to paint nor yet not to paint; that I did not want to stay awake nor yet to go to sleep; that I did not want to make love nor yet not to do so; and so on.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • Besides, when it came to the point of choosing a record, I was paralyzed by this thought: what sort of music is it that can be listened to in these moments of boredom?

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • And so at that time my life was dominated by a feeling of extraordinary impatience. Nothing that I did pleased me or seemed worth doing; furthermore, I was unable to imagine anything that could please me, or that could occupy me in any lasting manner. I was constantly going in and out of my studio on any sort of futile pretext—pretexts which I invented for myself with the sole object of not remaining there: to buy cigarettes I didn’t need, to have a cup of coffee I didn’t want, to acquire a newspaper that didn’t interest me, to visit an exhibition of pictures about which I hadn’t the slightest curiosity, and so on. I felt, moreover, that these occupations were nothing more than crazy disguises of boredom itself, so much so that sometimes I did not complete the errands I undertook. Instead of buying a newspaper or drinking coffee or visiting an exhibition, after taking a few steps I would return to the studio which I had left in such a hurry only a few minutes before. Back in the studio boredom, of course, awaited me and the whole process would begin over again.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • I have never treated my mother worse than I did during that period; and thus, to the boredom that oppressed me, there was added on top of everything else, a feeling of pity for her, incapable as she was of finding any explanation for my rudeness. Worse than anything, I suffered from a kind of paralysis of all my faculties, which made me mute and apathetic and dull, so that I felt as if I were buried alive inside myself, in a hermetically sealed and stifling prison.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • For me, boredom is not the opposite of amusement; I might even go so far as to say that in certain of its aspects it actually resembles amusement inasmuch as it gives rise to distraction and forgetfulness, even if of a very special type.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • Therefore, you must work and ask God to be with you in what you are doing. But beware of idleness, as God does not like the sluggard… You have to plant and water then God will make the plant grow…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II