You don’t really know a place until you’ve been bored in it

“When you drive on the Great Plains, sometimes it’s hard to understand why the land is so empty, why the small towns are dying, why you get so bored. And it’s hard to write about the boredom without being boring. The boredom is important, however: I don’t believe you know a place until you’ve been really bored in it.”
–Ian Frazier, in They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing (1991)