Olga Ravn > Quotes

“I look like a human, and feel the way humans do. I consist of the same parts. Perhaps all that's needed is for you to change my status in your documents? Is it a question of name? Could I be human if you called me so?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“You'd probably say it was a small world, but not if you have to clean it.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“You can say what you want, but I know you don’t want us to become too, well, what? Too human? Too living? But I like being alive. I look out at the endless deep outside the panorama windows. I see a sun. I burn the way the sun burns. I know without a doubt that I’m real. I may have been made, but now I’m making myself.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“Why do I have all these thoughts if the job I’m doing is mainly technical? Why do I have these thoughts if the reason I’m here is primarily to increase production? From what perspective are these thoughts productive? Was there an error in the update? If there was, I’d like to be rebooted.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“It’s me and it’s not me at the same time. I’ve had to change completely in order to assimilate this new part that you say is also me. Which is flesh and yet not flesh. When I woke up after the operation I felt scared, but that soon wore off. Now I’m performing better than anyone. I’m a very useful tool to the crew. It gives me a certain position. The only thing I haven’t been able to get used to yet are the dreams. I dream that there’s nothing where the add-on is. That the add-on has detached itself, or perhaps was never a part of me. That it possesses a deep-seated antipathy towards me. That it hovers in the air above me and then starts to attack. When I wake up from one of these dreams, the add-on aches a bit, and it feels as though I’ve got two: one where it’s supposed to be, and, floating just above it, another one that can’t be seen with the naked eye, but which comes into being in the darkness where I sleep, arising out of my sleep.”
― Olga Ravn, De ansatte

“We don’t fly under a sky here, but through a slumbering infinity.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“Do you think anyone's going to remember us? Who remembers those who were never born, yet live anyway?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“I am a pomegranate ripe with moist seeds, each seed a killing I'm going to carry out at some future time. When I've no more seeds inside me, when there's nothing left but flesh, I want to meet the man who made me.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Am I human or humanoid? Have I been dreamt into being?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine a future and then live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“I know without a doubt that I’m real. I may have been made, but now I’m making myself.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“Eu também tenho em mim palavras apagadas que deveria ter dito e já não sei mais o que significam.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“All I want is to be assimilated into a collective, human community where someone braids my hair with flowers and white curtains sway in a warm breeze; where every morning I wake up and drink a glass of chilled iced tea, drive a car across a continent, kick the dirt, fill my nostrils with the air of the desert and move in with someone, get married, bake cookies, push a stroller, learn to play an instrument, dance a waltz.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Every day, my hands yearn to dig deep into soil so that I might lower myself into its certainty, and the earth receive my death and make me its own.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Shopping had a kind of numbing effect on me, and now that it's no longer something I do, I've started having thoughts and feelings that have turned out to be sad.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“That’s why I’ve come to see you today, in the hope that there might be some other function in which I’d have less responsibility, without having to relate to the overall workflow to the same extent. I’d like to be assigned to that kind of position. I realize the abilities I’ve been allocated won’t be fully exploited in that case, but does the pain I feel not mean anything? I venture to suggest that such pain impacts the quality of my work and moreover may negatively influence the work of my colleagues. OK. I see. So I wouldn’t have the power of speech? No, I understand. I hereby consent. When”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

“But I look like a human, and feel the way humans do. I consist of the same parts... Is it a question of name? Could I be a human if you called me one?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“I’m like a plant where everything’s withered away apart from a single green shoot that’s still alive, and this shoot is my body and mind, and my mind is like a hand, it touches rather than thinks.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Could I be human if you called me so?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“If you’ll make an effort to talk, you say, we’ll make an effort to listen. We want to help you, you say. That way, you get a foot inside the door. You offer to help, but what you want is gratitude.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“What I miss most from home is shopping. It sounds a bit silly, I know. If ever I couldn’t grasp that something was happening, like when I got the job here and departure time was coming up, I’d go out and buy stuff in preparation for it, and in that way I understood it was for real. I understood impending events through shopping. I understood the circumstances through the items that characterized them. Shopping had a kind of numbing effect on me, and now that it’s no longer something I do, I’ve started having thoughts and feelings that have turned out to be sad.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“How can I describe it? Have you seen it? It looks like someone wrote on the stone while it was still in creation, but then after it came into being, when gradually it hardened and set, the words were obliterated in the process, becoming a pattern instead in the shiny stone, a shadow language. I too am marked by now-obliterated words I should have said, whose meaning I no longer recognize.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Significa alguma coisa para um humano ter saído de outro corpo humano? Ou posso ser humano tendo brotado de um saco de gosma, de um amontoado de ovas, de um aglomerado de ovos na margem de um lago, ou no meio de cereais ou ervas daninhas? Vivo no centro do mundo e tenho alguma relevância? Ou sou apenas mais um daqueles ovos moles amontoados uns sobre os outros?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“TESTIMONIO 038
Después de veintiocho días desempeñando mi trabajo en las salas empecé a preguntarme quién era yo aquí en definitiva. Un ser humano, empleado, que programa, cadete número diecisiete de la nave seis mil. Mi tarea con los objetos de la sala ha tomado una deriva irreal. Me descubro mirándolos ausente durante varios minutos sin ningún propósito.”
― Olga Ravn, Los empleados

“If I carry out an action that unbeknown to me is counteractive to the program’s momentum, I can do nothing but hate myself for it. But since I have no way of knowing whether an action in any given instance is antiprogrammatic, how am I to know if I’m to hate myself or not? Should I hate myself anyway?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Eu sei qual é o cheiro do musgo porque vocês o implantaram em mim, assim como implantaram a ideia de que eu deveria amar um homem, ser leal a um só homem, que deveria ser cortejada. Estamos todos aqui condenados ao sonho de um amor romântico, embora ninguém que eu conheça ame dessa forma ou viva essa vida. E, no entanto, são esses os sonhos que vocês nos deram. Conheço o cheiro, mas não sei qual a sensação do toque do musgo na mão; mesmo assim existe, na minha mão, a vaga noção de estar em plena floresta admirando o mar enquanto acaricio esse musgo no tronco de uma árvore. Me digam, forma vocês que implantaram essa sensação em mim? Ela faz parte do programa? Ou foi uma ideia que surgiu sozinha, que brotou dentro de mim?”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Acho que vocês me desprezam. A meu ver, vocês são uma família que construiu uma casa. E das salas aconchegantes da casa estão admirando uma chuva torrencial. Sãos e salvos ali dentro, a chuva não afeta seu conforto. Vocês estão secos e aquecidos. Desfrutando o que a vida tem de melhor. Chova o quanto chover, seu bem-estar não será afetado. Já eu estou debaixo dessa tempestade que vocês acham que nunca os atingirá. Me transformei nela, eu sou essa tormenta da qual vocês procuram abrigo. Vocês construíram essa casa justamente para me evitar. Não venham aqui me dizer que não tenho um papel a desempenhar na vida dos humanos.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“En kollega forklarer mig, hvad et angstanfald er, da jeg oplyser, at en elev har fået et anfald i en time. Han siger: „Det kan være godt at sætte sig på gulvet, det kan være godt at drikke et glas vand, de føler jo simpelthen, at de skal dø, du kan læse mere om det på nettet.“

Lille ven, tænker jeg om ham, ved du, at det jeg vil, er, at jeg gerne vil være ren, glinsende karamel, en karamelflade, der blødt reflekterer et træ i et vindue, at det hen gennem eftermiddagen langsomt skumrer. Jeg ønsker, da jeg står i Døgnnetto, tæt på midnat, med rystende hænder, efter at have forvildet mig ind til byen, at jeg var ren smør. Jeg køber frysetoasts og Petite Danone-yoghurt og mozzarellaost og en agurk, jeg vil spise det lette og salte og søde og det, der glider ned uden at tykkes. Jeg vil tabe mig, som man taber en rose, som et hjerte, der flyder over med smeltet ost. Som den hvide rose, Kim kastede fra sig, der er min gennemblødning, det olierede ved mig. At det er dét, jeg er, smeltendte og i evig fortsætten. Jeg fortsætter og fortsætter. Jeg fortsætter og fortsætter. Der er ikke mere, og det bliver ved.”
― Olga Ravn, Celestine

“Det blå og det gule. Raseriet har forlate meg for ein augneblink, kva er det eg er sint for? Eg vaknar og er letta for at draumane ikkje var verkelege. Ein mistar tennene sine.
I løyndom drøymer eg om å verta sadist. Det er sikkert synleg for nokon.
Eg kunne gjerne gitt meg over til noko totalitært. Eg kunne gjerne sokke inn i eit system som ned i ein blank sjø, der fullvaksne gjedder krølla seg om beina mine som late hundar.
Eg har ein rytme i hjarta som ikkje er hjarteslaget, men ei særskild ild, ein slags spiral eller sirkel, som tikkar sakte rundt gjennom årene, det blå, Celestine, vender alltid attende.”
― Olga Ravn, Celestine

“Eg fekk tanken om at alt eg nokon gong hadde vore utsett for, hadde møtt ein motstand i meg.”
― Olga Ravn, Celestine