Best of Olga Ravn's "The Employees"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken) 

I carry out my work the way I’ve always done, though with a certain melancholy, and at the same time, because of her, with a joy unknown to me until now. I exist in this new combination of melancholy and joy; this double emotion has become my companion.

p.59

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.

p.84

But at that moment, before I fully realized what I was doing, I was filled with affection, and I knew, the way one knows in dreams, what it means to love something living.

p.99

I think I’m going to encounter a great love in my life. My love is waiting for me already, I’m already immersed in it […] Everyone on the ship is doing their utmost. I believe in the future. I think you need to imagine a future and live in it. I believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment. We are but humble carrier craft of the program. Shortly, like obsolete updates, we shall be gone. I believe I’m going to encounter a great love in my life.

p.123