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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Most history books are about power. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" In 1942, the Germans were running out of fuel. They were advancing so fast across the grasslands, the hot grasslands of south Russia, and the Russians were running out of tanks. And so both of them turned to cavalry, and there were great cavalry battles on the grasslands. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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

" 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

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" When I was young, I always wanted to go to Russia. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

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

" 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

" In 1918, a police chief of Jerusalem was a Montefiore. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "

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

" 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

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

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

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

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