Top 66 Simon Sebag Montefiore Quotes

I always find that the more Jewish you are, the more people respect you.

The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.

Most history books are about power.

If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified.

The shameless criminality of Lenin, Stalin, and the Cheka cast a long shadow, but I don’t see their kind returning anytime soon.

Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled, or infiltrated by the secret police.

Regarding themselves as irreplaceable, both Lenin and Stalin tried in different ways to destroy their successors – Lenin through a testament that attacked Stalin and Trotsky, Stalin through purges culminating in the Doctors’ Plot of 1953.

A crenelated wall of books encircles my bed, its tottering towers looming ever taller, always on the verge of collapsing onto oblivious sleepers.

I love the flamboyance, the melodrama, the bloody theatre of Russian history.

Real stories – whether in pure fiction or historical – have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present.

I am ashamed to say that both my children knew Stalin before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine.

President Trump is, some ways, the personification of a new Bolshevism of the Right, where the ends justify the means and acceptable tactics include lies and smears and the exploitation of what Lenin called ‘useful idiots.’

A book’s title is vital.

All tyrannies are virtuoso displays, over many years, of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship, and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control.

We have far too many Tudors. Henry VIII is far too over-rated. He’s become the ultimate brand name, like the Marks & Spencers of a high street of British history. I’m more interested in King Herod.

Russia is so feudal in its system of patronage and reward that it is virtually impossible for a leader to hand over power without controlling his successor or at least receiving an exemption from prosecution – something Mr. Putin granted his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in 1999.

As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel’s changed, and so have I.

When I’m in Jerusalem, I stay at the American Colony Hotel, neutral territory: the secret peace talks of 1992/3 started there.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.

I see the world as an adventure thriller and a voyage of discovery. To me, all lives are lives of mystery and secrecy, and that’s what I write about.

I’d like to write a biography of Ivan the Terrible.

There is a view of Russian exceptionalism, that they are a unique civilisation, a view right since Ivan the Terrible that Russia is a special civilisation with a special culture. Putin is pushing that now.

In Georgia, where I spend much time, the democratically elected pro-western President Mikhail Saakashvili has been beleaguered by a riotous opposition which proposes creating a constitutional monarchy under the Bagrationi dynasty, with a Spanish racing driver, Prince ‘Jorge’ Bagrationi, as king.

Around us, we do see attempts to delegitimize Israel, a sort of secret, hidden anti-Semitism growing in many countries, often on the right but also on the left.

Russia’s first major intervention began in 1768, when Catherine the Great went to war with the Ottomans, and Count Alexei Orlov, the brother of her lover Grigory, sailed the Baltic fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar to rally rebellions in the Mediterranean.

While most know the young Stalin was a seminarian, few realize that he was also a Georgian patriot, a published romantic poet.

As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin’s consummate heir.

I don’t feel that Jewish people have a class.

With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement.

I much prefer writing fiction. History books, for me, are very hard work, very serious.

It’s the mix of the trivial and the great events that make up history. It’s the low things about high people that make it fascinating, and that’s why it would be a shame to exclude the trivial things. That mixing up is not just at the heart of history. It’s at the heart of how to live a great life.

Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited and photographed these extraordinarily well-preserved Stalinist time capsules.

The political lives of tyrants play out human affairs with a special intensity: the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power.

Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.

As a teenager, I had a weakness for freedom fighters. When Mugabe came to London to negotiate independence, I vanished from home to stand outside his hotel. I was very disappointed that he looked like a dorky teacher.

Every time I give an interview, I seem to offend somebody in my family, usually my mother.

The Russian Revolution mobilized a popular passion across the world based on Marxism-Leninism, fueled by messianic zeal. It was, perhaps, after the three Abrahamic religions, the greatest millenarian rapture of human history.

The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family’s home life during the last years of Russian autocracy.

The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism.

Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar – and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else.

I love the heat and the excitement of Israel, and I will always love Jerusalem.

To make a Frankenstein monster of a complex character like Stalin would have been too simplistic. I wanted to show who he was and, if you like, how he happened.

Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair’s greatest achievement!

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin’s freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian ‘controlled democracies’ – Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico – ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades.

There are few words in Russian for the Western concept of ‘law,’ but there are legions of words for connections, helping people from one’s neck of the woods.

I enjoy tequila, which has a strange effect on people and makes parties more fun than warm white wine.

Putin regards Stalin as a great tsar; he is a great tsar. Asked who the worst tsars were, he said Nicholas II and Gorbachev.

When I’m up, I’m over-exuberant; when I’m down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space.

The vanishing of David Tang is like the unthinkable diappearance of a magnificent palace on a mythical mountaintop. He was a dreammaker, pianist, adventurer, writer, entrepreneur, scholar, connoisseur, and a great friend.

Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology.

Unlike monarchs, who pass power to their heirs at the moment of death to ensure the survival of the regime, tyrants must simply survive as long as possible.

She grounded me. I have become very disciplined now. I would never have written the books without her. Definitely the cleverest thing I ever did was to marry Santa. Maybe it’s the only clever thing I did.

I don’t like sports. I’m not interested in sports. I hate sports.

Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield.

I’m the last person who would end up doing something that needs meticulous compilation of facts. It’s totally against my character. I live by impulse. I’m totally ill-suited to writing history books.

I can never resist Ruritanian intrigue: I was once charged with the task of offering the Estonian throne to Prince Edward. Feeling like a Dumas Musketeer on a mission, I did so, but he turned it down.

Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.