Home
Authors
Tags
App

Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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
Related Quotes:
" When I'm up, I'm over-exuberant; when I'm down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Wander
Up
My Own
" Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement! "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Will
Remembered
Gay
" 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
" 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
" As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Colonial
Russia
Superpower
" I much prefer writing fiction. History books, for me, are very hard work, very serious. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Writing
Hard Work
History
" 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
" 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
Been
Blackberry
Telephone
" I love the flamboyance, the melodrama, the bloody theatre of Russian history. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Theatre
Love
I Love
" 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
" Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Enjoy
Almost
Sacred
" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Georgia
Emperor
Stalin
" 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
View
Special
Now
" 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
" As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
More
Youth
Israel
" 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
Writing
End
Character
" 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
Police
Never
Revolution
" 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
" Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Writing
About
Jerusalem
" The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Dirty
Israel
Tend
" Most history books are about power. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Most
About
Books
" Alexander II really used autocracy well to negotiate the freeing of the serfs in 1861. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Used
Really
Negotiate
" 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
Mystery
Discovery
Adventure
" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fiction
Now
Wonderful
" 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
" 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
Literature
American
Dove
" Yeltsin was admirable but flawed, noble but tainted, but in his own negligent grandeur, he undermined his own real achievements - and accelerated their ruin. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Ruin
Admirable
He
" 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
" If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Could
Only
Somehow
" A book's title is vital. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Title
Vital
Book