Simon Sebag Montefiore

"The European upper classes...could not decide if the Jews were a noble race of persecuted biblical heroes, every one of them a King David and a Maccabee, or a sinister conspiracy of mystically brilliant, hook-nosed hobbits with almost supernatural powers."

"He hated Genrikh because true possession is to share the fabric of someone else’s life, he decided; it’s about proximity; love as geography."

"‘What’s Edith Wharton like?’ ‘Just like our own barons and princelings here. Our secret world is just like hers but with one crucial difference—it’s Edith Wharton with the death penalty.’"

"Nikolasha and Rosa had died for the romantic delusion: totalitarian love as reckless melodrama and desperate possession, an orchestra of trumpets and thunderbolts. Now he saw clearly that the real poetry of love was a meandering river, an accumulation of accidents, the momentum of details."

"Heartbreak, he thought, is an agonizing disease that you’re delighted to have."

"To her, libraries were like hotels: secret villages inhabited by passing strangers from a thousand different worlds brought together just for a few hours."