Asne Seierstad Quotes & Sayings

We have believing in this innocent feeling of nothing will ever happen to us, because all catastrophes always broad and happening to anyone else. — Asne Seierstad

If I leave, reality will devour me. Then they will all really be dead. — Asne Seierstad

I believe the consequences of a war are so harsh that it should be always the last resort. — Asne Seierstad

As a war correspondent, you have to weigh the risk you run against the story you can get. — Asne Seierstad

I'm trying to see my own country with fresh eyes. — Asne Seierstad

There are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one's wrath on. — Asne Seierstad

Being a war correspondent, and having covered four wars, I know that wars very seldom solve things. — Asne Seierstad

I think when you start to get afraid, it's time to leave. — Asne Seierstad

I always try to describe the situation just as it is. I try to find sentences that I believe tell the story best. Even my articles are more literary than ordinary news stories. — Asne Seierstad

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! — Asne Seierstad

I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody. — Asne Seierstad

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. — Asne Seierstad

We don't grow up in vacuums. We grow up in societies. — Asne Seierstad

There is nothing I would change - to change it I would have had to write a totally different book. — Asne Seierstad

Our answer is more democracy, more openness and more humanity. But never naivety. — Asne Seierstad

Do you know what is our problem? We know everything about our weapons, but we know nothing about how to use a telephone. — Asne Seierstad

Even in a war, someone has to take care of daily life. Someone has to feed and clothe the children. — Asne Seierstad

I will get a loan and pay the money the court asks for. But I will not lay down my writing and I still say this was an important book to write. — Asne Seierstad

Wild animals walked in a straight line, tame ones tended to wander more aimlessly. — Asne Seierstad

If you've lived in a dictatorship for thirty years, you're used to people lying to you. — Asne Seierstad

There is no journalist without opinions, and there's no real objectivity, but we can strive toward it. — Asne Seierstad

A society gets the graffiti it deserves,' commented one criminologist on the street galleries that grew ever scruffier. — Asne Seierstad

I was thinking, there are 5 million people, and I am just one of those 5 million. In the build-up to the war you see children playing in the street, and you think, ah, I'm going to be okay. — Asne Seierstad

If my name had not been cleared, it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to continue as a journalist. — Asne Seierstad

Why did you want children when you knew there was a war?' Mustafa — Asne Seierstad

They played a game of dare - who could get closest to the flames? — Asne Seierstad

As a woman, you accept the situation, adapt to it, and do your best, whereas men would choose violence. — Asne Seierstad

Anonymity became a release, the only place to which I could turn. — Asne Seierstad

There are personal reasons, psychological reasons, but there could also be political reasons for becoming a terrorist. — Asne Seierstad

Gerd called life 'existing minute by minute'. Every single minute felt like a battle. Time went on but life had stopped. — Asne Seierstad

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. — Asne Seierstad

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. — Asne Seierstad

To say nothing means to give one's consent. — Asne Seierstad

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan. — Asne Seierstad

If I lose, then I have to accept that my way of writing books is not the way society says it's okay to write. — Asne Seierstad

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? — Asne Seierstad

The family is the single most important institution in Afghan culture. It is described in the country's constitution as the 'fundamental pillar of society'. — Asne Seierstad

It was very difficult to write about my own country, because I have always been the outsider looking in. — Asne Seierstad

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. — Asne Seierstad

When a man has everything and does not know what more to do, he tries to teach his donkey to talk. — Asne Seierstad

The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important. — Asne Seierstad

As the only woman, I was able to sit with the officers in front, with a glass of vodka in one hand and a cucumber in the other. That's how I went to my first war. — Asne Seierstad

When I decided to stay in Iraq, I decided to take the fear out of my body and put it into a freezer. — Asne Seierstad

Evil can kill a human being, but never conquer a people!' * — Asne Seierstad

The judgment means a lot. As a journalist being accused of invading someone's privacy, there is always a risk that it will stick to your name. — Asne Seierstad

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 — Asne Seierstad