Quotes from Simon Sebag Montefiore

I'm not disciplined at all. I barely function. But I get a lot done. I take days off all the time, but when I work, I work very fast and very efficiently. But I'm always having days when I'm feeling a little anxious, and I take a day off. I work in a funny way.

With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement.

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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Most history books are about power.

Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar.

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

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

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.

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

Power is always personal: any study of a Western democratic leader today reveals that, even in a transparent system with its short periods in office, personalities shape administrations. Democratic leaders often rule through trusted retainers instead of official ministers. In any court, power is as fluid as human personality.

Marx wrote that 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.' This was witty but far from true. History is never repeated, but it borrows, steals, echoes and commandeers the past to create a hybrid, something unique out of the ingredients of past and present.

What's important is not who YOU love but WHO loves you.

Necessity is very often the mother of romance.

The happiness of children is based on their ignorance of what their parents are really thinking

Sex fills a few hours of our lives yet those precious minutes count for more than months and years

Every love story is a requiem.

Heartbreak is an agonizing disease that you're delighted to have