Simon Sebag-Montefiore Quotes

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  • Journalist
  • born 1965
  • 102 quotes

Simon Sebag-Montefiore, a journalist (born 1965), is quoted 102 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Stalin, Jerusalem, Russia and Putin.

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A book's title is vital.

Most history books are about power.

Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status.

I don't feel that Jewish people have a class.

Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield.

I always wanted to write a history of Jerusalem.

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

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

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

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

Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.

I don't like sports. I'm not interested in sports. I hate sports.

Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement!

The greatest privilege of childhood is to live totally in the present.

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

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

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

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

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

Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.

Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators.

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

Alexander II really used autocracy well to negotiate the freeing of the serfs in 1861.

I much prefer writing fiction. History books, for me, are very hard work, very serious.

Every time I give an interview, I seem to offend somebody in my family, usually my mother.

Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar - and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else.

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

When I'm up, I'm over-exuberant; when I'm down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space.

The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable.

I enjoy tequila, which has a strange effect on people and makes parties more fun than warm white wine.

As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I.

When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing.

As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir.

I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.

Stalin was formed by much more than a miserable childhood, just as the USSR was formed by much more than Marxist ideology.

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

The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism.

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

While most know the young Stalin was a seminarian, few realize that he was also a Georgian patriot, a published romantic poet.

When I'm in Jerusalem, I stay at the American Colony Hotel, neutral territory: the secret peace talks of 1992/3 started there.

The shameless criminality of Lenin, Stalin, and the Cheka cast a long shadow, but I don't see their kind returning anytime soon.

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

One of the strange things about doing publicity is that a mistake in a newspaper profile long ago is repeated and amplified over time.

The West is pathetically naive about Russian reformers. We long to believe they are real liberals, but no liberal will ever rule Russia.

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

A crenelated wall of books encircles my bed, its tottering towers looming ever taller, always on the verge of collapsing onto oblivious sleepers.

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.

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.

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.

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 is quoted on

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