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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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’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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“everything was blood and nothing was happiness.”
― Olga Ravn, My Work

“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

“I love life, she says, it belongs to me.”
― Olga Ravn, The Wax Child

“Her lavender-gray skirt, shiny from wear, flamed into a blazing ball.”
― Olga Ravn, The Wax Child

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

“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

“De pé ali admirando o vale, sem se importar se somos humanos ou humanoides, categorias que deixam de existir, ou pelo menos deixam de valer naquele instante em que ficamos lado a lado apenas para apreciar a vista do vale.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Gosto de estar vivo. Admiro o infinito atrás das janelas panorâmicas. Olho para o sol. Ardo como arde o sol, estou convencido de que sou real. Vocês podem ter me criado, mas agora estou no processo de criar a mim mesmo.”
― 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

“They consulted their books of demonology, and there read: The woman is more easily tempted by Satan, for she is weaker than the man in both body and soul. And they read: The woman is a wicked and imperfect animal. When a woman weeps she weaves snares, and labours to deceive a man. And they read: When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil. She is not capable of good thoughts. And they read: The woman is feebler than the man and more easily charmed by the Devil. And they read: The word woman is another expression for desires of the flesh. And they read: All witchcraft stems from fleshly desires, which in the woman are insatiable. And they read: At times the man may be deprived of his virile member. When the member is in no way stirred, this is a sign of frigidity of nature; but when it is stirred and becomes erect, but yet cannot perform, it is a sign of witchcraft. And they read: Women are more credulous, by nature's hand more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit. They have slippery tongues and are unable to conceal from their fellow women those things which they know through their evil arts. Since they are weak they find a secret and easy manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft. And they read: In this dusk of the world, when sin is flourishing on every side and in every place, when charity is growing cold, the evil of witches and their iniquities superabound. And they read: Where there are many women, there are many witches.”
― Olga Ravn, The Wax Child