Julia

“As children we see happiness as a thing. A toy train sticking out of a basket or the plastic film around a slice of cake. or a photograph of a scene in which we are at the centre, all eyes on us.

As adults it gets more complicated. Happiness is success, work, a man or a woman. All vague, laborious things. Whether it's a word we use to describe our lives or not, it is mostly just that, a word.

Childhood taught us something different about happiness, Yui thought, that all you needed to do was reach out your hand in the right direction and you could grasp it.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World

“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

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

“...it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue