Quotes from The Bookseller of Kabul

Åsne Seierstad ·  288 pages

Rating: (35.6K votes)


“When a man has everything and does not know what more to do, he tries to teach his donkey to talk.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“What the sounds and smells do not divulge, gossip supplies. It spreads like wildfire in the neighborhood, where everyone is watching one another's morals.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“War was a central theme in maths books too. School books - because the Taliban printed books soley for boys - did not calcualte in apples and cakes, but in bullets and kalasnikovs. Something like this: 'little Omar has a kalasnikov with three magazines. There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He uses two thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels does he kill with each bullet?”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“Anonymity became a release, the only place to which I could turn.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“In Afghanistan a woman’s longing for love is taboo. It is forbidden by the tribes’ notion of honor and by the mullahs. Young people have no right to meet, to love, or to choose. Love has little to do with romance; on the contrary, love can be interpreted as committing a serious crime, punishable by death.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul



“They played a game of dare - who could get closest to the flames?”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“Do you know what is our problem? We know everything about our weapons, but we know nothing about how to use a telephone.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“There are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one’s wrath on.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


“Los talibanes eran poco versados en la historia islámica o afgana, y tampoco les interesaba lo más mínimo.”
― Åsne Seierstad, quote from The Bookseller of Kabul


About the author

Åsne Seierstad
Born place: in Oslo, Norway
Born date February 10, 1970
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.”
― Margaret Mitchell, quote from Gone with the Wind


“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, quote from The Fault in Our Stars


“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


“Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.”
― Shel Silverstein, quote from The Giving Tree


“You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!”
― Emily Brontë, quote from Wuthering Heights


Interesting books

In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon
(2.1K)
In the Buddha's Word...
by Bhikkhu Bodhi
The Case of the Missing Servant
(6.9K)
The Case of the Miss...
by Tarquin Hall
Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
(2.7K)
Growing Up Bin Laden...
by Jean Sasson
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
(5.8K)
The Inconvenient Ind...
by Thomas King
The Mourning After
(2.1K)
The Mourning After
by Adriane Leigh
Rome
(29.1K)
Rome
by Jay Crownover

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.