O bitter is the knowledge that one draws from the voyage!
The monotonous and tiny world, today
Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our reflections,
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom!

 — Charles Baudelaire from “Le Voyage” in The Flowers of Evil

“And this is really more than enough. In the middle of a desert of boredom, an oasis of horror. There is no more lucid diagnosis for the illness of modern man. To escape boredom, to escape deadlock, all we have at at hand, though not so close at hand, because even here an effort is required, is horror, or in other words, evil.”

— Roberto Bolaño from “Notes Toward an Annotated Edition of 2666” by Natasha Wimmer, translator of 2666