Asne Seierstad Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

We don't grow up in vacuums. We grow up in societies.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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'.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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