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All Quotes by author - Simon Sebag Montefiore

" A book's title is vital. "

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

" 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. "

" Alexander II really used autocracy well to negotiate the freeing of the serfs in 1861. "

" 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. "

" A reforming liberal leader in Russia is the Holy Grail of Kremlinology, but the search for one is as misguided and hopeless as that for the relic of the Last Supper. "

" A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Believe it or not, some Western analysts in the 1930s insisted that Stalin was a 'moderate,' controlled by extremists like the secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov. "

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

" Colonel Qaddafi's tyranny was absolutist, monarchical, and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. "

" 'Daddy used to be a Georgian,' Stalin's son, Vasily, once said. Actually, the dictator didn't truly become Russian; he remained Georgian culturally. Yet he embraced the imperial mission of the Russian people. "

" Every Russian emperor from Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin knows a leader and his security agencies must never be parted. His safety depends on their slavish devotion. "

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

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

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

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

" I always wanted to write a history of Jerusalem. "

" I am a passionate nonfinisher. Life is too short, and there are too many great books to read, so if I lose interest or respect, I switch. But when, of course, when you really fall in love with a book, all the others are ignored. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I don't feel that Jewish people have a class. "

" I don't like sports. I'm not interested in sports. I hate sports. "

" I don't think Jerusalem should be controlled 100% by religious people of any denomination, sect, or religion - even my own. "

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

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

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