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 stared at the changing patterns on the back of his white shirt as he moved under the trees.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault


“Lei frugò tra le lenzuola, quindi serrò le dita intorno al legno levigato.
«Ti amerò per sempre, Phillip». E lo pugnalò.”
― Colleen Gleason, quote from The Rest Falls Away


“Give you whatany you want, Chessiebomb. Anything.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from Home


“Every time I walk with Alex I'm reminded both how lucky I am to have friends like him and also how unworthy I am to have friends like him. - Oliver Stone”
― David Baldacci, quote from Hell's Corner


“Sadie was like that, one of those people untouched by trend or fashion, comfortable building her own world out of what she liked, from tunes and styles and reads that could be so ancient they were cobwebbed, up through to things so new they barley existed yet.”
― Michael Grant, quote from BZRK


Interesting books

Wolf in White Van
(17.7K)
Wolf in White Van
by John Darnielle
Getting There: A Book of Mentors
(696)
Getting There: A Boo...
by Gillian Zoe Segal
Paradigm Shift: How proper organization and preparation are the back-bones of any trading success (Trading Easyread Series Book 1)
(18)
Trust
(7.6K)
Trust
by Ella Frank
Crazy Good
(7.2K)
Crazy Good
by Rachel Robinson
The Unreals
(25)
The Unreals
by Donald Jeffries

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.