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

“You can only get outside yourself by looking inside.”
― Tonya Hurley, quote from Homecoming


“A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight


“He spent the next two days in careful, decisive preparation efficiently conducted around his day job. The three imperatives of his mission were embedded in every action he performed: (1) keep it simple; (2) provide for every contingency; and (3) never panic no matter how much your plan goes awry, which it occasionally did. However, if there were a fourth rule, it would have to be: exploit the fact that most people are fools when it comes to things that actually matter, like their own survival. He had never suffered from that shortcoming.”
― David Baldacci, quote from The Collectors


“In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.”
― Mark Kurlansky, quote from Salt: A World History


“You don’t see yourself clearly, but I do. You’re the man that I want, and I’m fighting for you, fighting for us.”
― Ella Fox, quote from Broken Hart


Interesting books

The Quiet Game
(23.6K)
The Quiet Game
by Greg Iles
Lady Luck
(32.5K)
Lady Luck
by Kristen Ashley
The Emperor's Code
(38.5K)
The Emperor's Code
by Gordon Korman
The Jewel
(28.9K)
The Jewel
by Amy Ewing
Innocent Traitor
(27.6K)
Innocent Traitor
by Alison Weir
A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #1)
(69.8K)

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.