Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I love the flamboyance, the melodrama, the bloody theatre of Russian history. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Theatre
Love
I Love
Related Quotes:
" 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
Leader
City
Find
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Destroy
Different
Plot
" Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Were
Write
Artists
" 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
Time
Racing
Monarchy
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Past
Learning
Hope
" Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement! "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Will
Remembered
Gay
" 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
People
Curiosity
Great
" 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
Pink
Life
Moon
" 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
Me
Never
Now
" Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Enjoy
Almost
Sacred
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Street
History
King
" When I was young, I always wanted to go to Russia. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Young
Wanted
Always
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Experience
Mexico
Democracy
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Hopeless
Liberal
Leader
" Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Historical
Past
In The Past
" Stalin, of course, never went on trial, but his legacy did. In 1956, three years after his death, he was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev. And his crimes were even more explicitly exposed by Mikhail Gorbachev during the late '80s. Yet to many, Stalin remains more legitimate as a Russian leader than anyone since. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Legacy
Late
Three
" Most history books are about power. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Most
About
Books
" A crenelated wall of books encircles my bed, its tottering towers looming ever taller, always on the verge of collapsing onto oblivious sleepers. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Books
Towers
Wall
" 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
Some
Police
Like
" 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
Long
Death
Survival
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Hidden
Growing
Right
" The shameless criminality of Lenin, Stalin, and the Cheka cast a long shadow, but I don't see their kind returning anytime soon. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Long
Returning
See
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
History
World
Revolution
" Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar - and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fears
Else
Above
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Mission
Down
Task
" The Soviet Union was designed for Muscovite rule, not for division into independent republics. Yet the latter is exactly what happened in 1991 - and the Kremlin has never accepted it. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Independent
Union
Never
" 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.' "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
New
Right
President
" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Georgia
Emperor
Stalin
" I don't think Jerusalem should be controlled 100% by religious people of any denomination, sect, or religion - even my own. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Think
Religion
People
" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fiction
Now
Wonderful