“Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom”

[O] : Introduction, 0.2
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: The principle of interpretation says that "a sign is something by knowing which we know something more" (Peirce). The Peircean idea of semiosis is the idea of an infinite process of interpretation. It seems that the symbolic mode is the paramount example of this possibility.
However, interpretation is not reducible to the responses elicited by the textual strategies accorded to the symbolic mode. The interpretation of metaphors shifts from the univocality of catachreses to the open possibilities offered by inventive metaphors. Many texts have undoubtedly many possible senses, but it is still possible to decide which one has to be selected if one approaches the text in the light of a given topic, as well as it is possible to tell of certain texts how many isotopies they display.

Source: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories

Source: Thief of Time

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 13
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: These pictures were supposed to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.

Quoted in Remembrance by Tom Johnson (September 1987)

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 5

Der allgemeine Ueberblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile.
Personality; or, What a Man Is
Essays

(VIII.4) Del Rey, p. 284
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)
Variant: Maybe. A powerful. Enough. Metaphor. Grows. Its own. Truth.