They were connoisseurs of boredom. They savoured the various bouquets of the subtly differentiated boredoms which rose from the long, wasted hours at the dead end of night.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the experience of boredom and how it can be perceived and appreciated in nuanced ways.
In this quote, Angela Carter explores the concept of boredom and the human experience of time during moments of inactivity. She suggests that boredom is not merely a negative state, but rather a complex feeling that can be indulged in and examined with a level of sophistication, similar to how one might appreciate fine art or wine. This perspective transforms boredom from a simple void into an opportunity for deep reflection and awareness.
In practice
In a discussion about the significance of downtime, one might quote Carter to highlight the value of boredom.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written β heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.
Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.
Since the 1980s, we've been living in this era, really, of corporate rule, based on this idea that the role of government is to liberate the power of capital so that they can have as much economic growth as quickly as possible, and then all good things will flow from that.
Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.
Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. Too many people have walked away from the church, not because theyβre walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus.
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.
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