Åsne Seierstad (born 10 February 1970) is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writer, best known for her accounts of everyday life in war zones – most notably Kabul after 2001, Baghdad in 2002 and the ruined Grozny in 2006.[1] (wikipedia)
We don't grow up in vacuums. We grow up in societies.
I'm trying to see my own country with fresh eyes.
It was very difficult to write about my own country, because I have always been the outsider looking in.
There are personal reasons, psychological reasons, but there could also be political reasons for becoming a terrorist.
If you've lived in a dictatorship for thirty years, you're used to people lying to you.
As a woman, you accept the situation, adapt to it, and do your best, whereas men would choose violence.
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.
I think when you start to get afraid, it's time to leave.
As a war correspondent, you have to weigh the risk you run against the story you can get.
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.