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1 " 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 , The Bookseller of Kabul
2 " Be yourself!’ said Gro. ‘No one will hear any of you otherwise, still less trust you. That’s the most important thing of all. If you’re not yourself you just can’t sustain it in the long term. "
― Åsne Seierstad
3 " We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact. Hjalmar Söderberg, Doktor Glas, 1905 "
― Åsne Seierstad , One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway
4 " Do you know what is our problem? We know everything about our weapons, but we know nothing about how to use a telephone. "
5 " Our answer is more democracy, more openness and more humanity. But never naivety. "
6 " Evil can kill a human being, but never conquer a people!’ * "
7 " Wild animals walked in a straight line, tame ones tended to wander more aimlessly. "
8 " Why did you want children when you knew there was a war?’ Mustafa "
9 " What went wrong? Well, comrades, when the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, it was not just a bank going broke, it was a political ideology going bankrupt. The failure of market liberalism. It ended decades of naive, uncritical faith in the market looking after itself. It does not! "
10 " Gerd called life 'existing minute by minute'. Every single minute felt like a battle. Time went on but life had stopped. "
11 " Sadiq pondered the nature of war. Everyone was sure that they had the right to the land and the others should be forced to leave. That they had God on their side while the others were in league with the devil. Everyone believed they owned the truth, and everyone seemed thirsty for blood. "
― Åsne Seierstad , To søstre
12 " Through the book, I want to give something back to the community from which it sprang. My royalties for this book in Norway are being donated in full to the ‘En av oss’ (One of Us) foundation. The foundation’s statutes allow for the money to be distributed to a wide range of causes nationally and internationally, in the areas of development, education, sport, culture and the environment. I have chosen to let those who contributed most to the book decide which causes will receive support. I think that would be in the spirit of their children. "
13 " Anders Behring Breivik was formally charged under paragraph l47 of the Norwegian Penal Code, the so-called terror paragraph, which carries a maximum penalty of twenty-one years in prison, with the possibility of extension, if the convicted prisoner represents a danger to society. "
14 " A society gets the graffiti it deserves,’ commented one criminologist on the street galleries that grew ever scruffier. "
15 " Under a bad leadership Serbs are capable of committing the most terrible atrocities; under good leaders we can do great deeds. It's like a field - if it's not cared for, the weeds will take over. But if you tend it, water and feed the seeds, you will read a bountiful harvest. Serbs are lazy, we lack discipline and have no capacity for self-criticism." With Their Backs to the World "
16 " في بعض الأوقات أخذت السماء بأكملها تتوهج بالصواريخ محيلة الليل إلى نهار. فكانت تبقى عالقة هناك لوقت وجيز ثم تسقط ببطء على الأرض.من كتاب "ملاك غروزني" ص54 "
― Åsne Seierstad , The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War
17 " When a man has everything and does not know what more to do, he tries to teach his donkey to talk. "
18 " 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. "
19 " 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? "
20 " Anonymity became a release, the only place to which I could turn. "
