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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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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" Colonel Qaddafi's tyranny was absolutist, monarchical, and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology. "

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

" Most history books are about power. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "

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

" A book's title is vital. "

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

" It is a characteristic of potentates that they don't succumb to peaceful retirement. Instead, they hold power in their hoary fists as judgment and grip weaken, destroying any successors except family members. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I am ashamed to say that both my children knew Stalin before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine. "

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

" If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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