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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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" The tsar of War and Peace, especially in the BBC version, is a complete popinjay and a useless character. The real tsar, Alexander I, had an amazing career. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I'm not disciplined at all. I barely function. But I get a lot done. I take days off all the time, but when I work, I work very fast and very efficiently. But I'm always having days when I'm feeling a little anxious, and I take a day off. I work in a funny way. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Nicholas I has been called 'Genghis Khan with a telegraph.' Stalin was 'Genghis Khan with a telephone.' But Mr. Putin is not Genghis Khan with a BlackBerry. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" A book's title is vital. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I was driving across Georgia with a warlord and his bodyguards riding shotgun with their Kalashnikovs in a convoy of Mercedes and Land Rovers. The guy put on Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' on a cassette, which they played on loudspeakers as we raced across the mountains, and I remember thinking, 'This sure beats respectable life in England.' "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity! "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I'm the sort of person who, if I arrive in a city under siege, in the middle of nowhere, I'll always find my way to the leader of the rebels. I just don't know how. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore