“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
“In tutte le corse lunghe ben riuscite, arriva il punto in cui smetto di pensare, e a quel punto cominciano i pensieri. A volte sono insignificanti, a volte no. Correre è lo spazio aperto dove vanno a giocare i pensieri. Non corro per pensare. Ma quando corro, i pensieri arrivano. Non sono esterni alla corsa, come una sorta di premio o di valore aggiunto. Fanno parte di quel che è la corsa stessa, della sua essenza. Quando il mio corpo corre, anche i miei pensieri corrono e in un modo che ha ben poco a che fare con i miei stratagemmi o le mie scelte.”
― Mark Rowlands, quote from The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness
“Sometimes fear and dread are superior to tedium.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Passenger
“She would have to work alone, and she was fine with that.”
― Kayla Krantz, quote from Dead by Morning
“To be a writer, to be a good writer, you need courage. You need to be prepared to expose yourself.”
― Renée Knight, quote from Disclaimer
“At night, some of us gaze at the dark sky and wonder what is beyond what we can see and what we can comprehend as human beings. Things like God and Satan, if there is life elsewhere. Even if we are one day able to see and comprehend these things, we will have to accept the fact that there is still even more to discover. No matter how much you think you may know, you will never know it all.”
― quote from Anthology Complex
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.