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" My wife Santa is a fanatical skier, going to Klosters many times a year. To please her, I have for 12 years tried to ski, abseil, mountain-climb, para-scend, heli-ski, land-lauf, ice-skate, toboggan, luge, bobsleigh, yodel, gulp gluhwein, dunk bread in cheese fondue, or even walk in the mountains. I have failed at every one of these pursuits. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore
Bread
Cheese
Walk
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" As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement! "
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" 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
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" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write. "
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" 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. "
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" I'd like to write a biography of Ivan the Terrible. "
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" 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! "
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" 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. "
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" '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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" 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
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" Russia is so feudal in its system of patronage and reward that it is virtually impossible for a leader to hand over power without controlling his successor or at least receiving an exemption from prosecution - something Mr. Putin granted his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in 1999. "
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" Every time I give an interview, I seem to offend somebody in my family, usually my mother. "
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" 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. "
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" I see the world as an adventure thriller and a voyage of discovery. To me, all lives are lives of mystery and secrecy, and that's what I write about. "
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" Mugabe's resignation fascinates because the fall of tyrants is always a family story, decline of the father, writ large. What a strange creature he is. "
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" 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
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" Most history books are about power. "
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" When I'm up, I'm over-exuberant; when I'm down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space. "
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" Yeltsin was admirable but flawed, noble but tainted, but in his own negligent grandeur, he undermined his own real achievements - and accelerated their ruin. "
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" If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified. "
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" I always wanted to write a history of Jerusalem. "
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" When I'm in Jerusalem, I stay at the American Colony Hotel, neutral territory: the secret peace talks of 1992/3 started there. "
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