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" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fiction
Now
Wonderful
Related Quotes:
" Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
About
Word
Writing
" When I'm in Jerusalem, I stay at the American Colony Hotel, neutral territory: the secret peace talks of 1992/3 started there. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Peace
American
Hotel
" 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
" The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Dirty
Israel
Tend
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Improvement
Greatness
Great
" 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
" I much prefer writing fiction. History books, for me, are very hard work, very serious. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Writing
Hard Work
History
" It was always presumptuous to expect Russia, an ancient nation-state and proud empire of distinct culture with a tradition of autocracy, to become an Anglo-American democracy overnight - just as it is naive to expect it in other parts of the world. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Culture
Always
Democracy
" President Yeltsin's instincts were decent: he encouraged the marketplace, the press flourished, and everything started to open - even the KGB archives. Yeltsin reburied Nicholas II. Free from Soviet anti-semitism, he surrounded himself with Jewish capitalists and advisers who returned to public life for the first time since the 1920s. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Life
Everything
Free
" 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
Security
Safety
Never
" 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
Great
First
Her
" 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
Romantic
Know
Patriot
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Home
Teacher
Freedom
" When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Nothing
School
You
" A book's title is vital. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Title
Vital
Book
" 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
" 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
Family
Hero
Democracy
" I always find that the more Jewish you are, the more people respect you. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Find
You
Respect
" Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Obsessed
Paranoid
Culture
" The West is pathetically naive about Russian reformers. We long to believe they are real liberals, but no liberal will ever rule Russia. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Long
Will
Believe
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Love
Respect
Great
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Influence
Soviet
Union
" Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement! "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Will
Remembered
Gay
" 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
" I love the heat and the excitement of Israel, and I will always love Jerusalem. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Always
Heat
Excitement
" 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
Death
Revolution
Cloud
" 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. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Some
Black
Sea