Mario Puzo Quotes

Writing, like gambling, was always a big part of my life," he used to say. "Both gave me sanctuary from the world. And you never really had to kill someone to get what you wanted. You just had to beat fate.

Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.

Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.

Lampone made a gesture that said he would be patient, knowing his reward was certain.

Neri was content, satisfied that he lived in a world that properly rewarded a man who did his duty.

I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more.

The world is what it is, and you are what you are.

No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no.

Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.

My dear Guiliano," he said, "how is it that you and Don Croce do not join together to rule Sicily? He has the wisdom of age, you have the idealism of youth.

He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful."
...
Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important.

Sometimes I'd see a movie in a private screening room. No fun. People took phone calls and messages while watching. Made jokes, talked. When I go to a movie I'm a true believer. Or I just walk out.

Listen to me. I will tell you the truth about a man's life. I will tell you the truth about his love for women.

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

Jack Woltz: Now you listen to me, you smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch, let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is! Johnny Fontane will never get that movie! I don't care how many dago guinea wop greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!
Tom Hagen: I'm German-Irish.
Jack Woltz: Well, let me tell you something, my kraut-mick friend, I'm gonna make so much trouble for you, you won t know what hit you!
Tom Hagen: Mr. Woltz, I'm a lawyer. I have not threatened you.

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

Softly, reassuringly, he comforted his friend, as they waited for death together. As if the Don could truly snatch the life of Genco Abbandando back from that most foul and criminal traitor to man.

Even the strongest man needs friends.

Power isn't everything ...its the only thing.

He wanted the world to believe that he was a horse rider. So let him ride his horses at the bottom of the ocean.

Great men have allied themselves with the angels at a terrible price to themselves. Evil men indulge their slightest whim for small satisfactions while accepting the fate of burning in Hell.

Actions define a man,words are just a fart in the wind.

For the first time the Don showed annoyance. He poured another glass of anisette and drank it down. He pointed a finger at his son. "You want to learn," he said. "Now listen to me. A man's first duty is to keep himself alive. Then comes what everyone else calls honor. This dishonor, as you call it, I willingly take upon myself. I did it to save your life as you once took on dishonor to save mine. You would have never left Sicily alive without Don Croce's protection. So be it. Do you want to be a hero like Guiliano, a legend? And dead? I love him as the son of my dear friends, but I do not envy him his fame. You are alive and he is dead. Always remember that and live your life not be be a hero but to remain alive. With time, heroes seem a little foolish."

Michael sighed. "Guiliano had no choice," he said.

"We are more fortunate," the Don said.

It was the first lesson Michael received from his father and the one he learned best. It was to color his future life, persuade him to make terrible decisions he could never have dreamed of making before. It changed his perception of honor and heroism. It helped him survive, but it made him unhappy. For despite the fact that his father did not envy Guiliano, Michael did.

Michael Corleone understood for the first time why men like his father chose to become thieves and murderers rather than members of the legal society. The poverty and fear and degradation were too awful to be acceptable to any man of spirit.

Michael: Barzini will set me up through somebody close ... that, supposedly, I won't suspect.
Hagen: Somebody like me.
Michael: You're Irish, they won't trust you.
Hagen: I'm German-American.
Michael: To them that's Irish.

As much as a man can guarantee anything against fate. Yes, I'm confident

He had been a tough teenager in New York's Hell's Kitchen.

The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek.

Michael looked around the beautiful garden with its many colored flowers, fragrant lemon trees, the old statures of the gods dug from ancient ruins, other newer ones of holy saints, the rose-colored walls across the villa. It was a lovely setting for the examination of twelve murderous apostles.

A man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!

I'll tell you the only real truth. Cunt is where it all begins and where it all ends. Cunt is the only thing worth living for. Everything else is a fake, a fraud and just shit.

I believe in friendship and I'm willing to show my friendship first.

He was not a bad man, he was a good husband and father, but constant worry about his investments, about the money he earned, about the inevitable expenses that came with being a man of property had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he was in a constant state of irritation

Friendship and money: oil and water.

It pleased him to see the hurt look on her face, the tears springing into her eyes. She might be a daughter of the Great Don but she was his wife, she was his property now and he could treat her as he pleased. It made him feel powerful that one of the Corleones was his doormat.

The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.

God seemed to be having a hard time killing him, and he'd be damned if he was going to make the job easy for mere mortals

We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again.

This place is full of shit. It's run by aliens from outer space. Sure, they make the food look Italian, they make it smell Italian, but it tastes like goo from Mars.

I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.

I do not seek it or desire it. If I must, I will accept the punishment for all my sins.

We hope someday to be saints, but not martyrs

He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.

But time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty. Now Bonasera felt the sickness of a man faced with disaster.

It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just didn't go together except in dire emergencies, if then.

Not having to worry about money is almost like not having to worry about dying.

He'd always been a man who followed his head and not his heart.The heart was just a bloody motor.The head was meant to drive

You talk about vengeance. Is vengeance going to bring your son back to you or my boy to me? I forgo the vengeance of my son. But I have selfish reasons, my youngest son was forced to leave this country because of this Sollozzo business. All right, now I have to make arrangements to bring him back here safely cleared of all these false charges. But I'm a superstitious man and if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he's struck by a bolt of lightening, then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room, and that I do not forgive. But, that aside, let me say that I swear, on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will not be the one to break the peace we have made here today.

Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!

A man's first duty is to keep himself alive. Then comes what everyone calls honor.

The Don moved to sit behind the big desk. You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no'. You have to take time and trouble. But I'm old-fashioned, you're the new modern generation, don't listen to me.

Do not exercise power because it is easy to your hand. And do not get carried away with a certainty of victory when your intellect tells you there is even a hint of tragedy.

You know, it's a funny thing. You can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, and even eat yourself to death. But that's all acceptable. The only thing you can't do medically is screw yourself to death, and yet that's where they put all the obstacles.

Charity is salt in the wound. It is painful. The state gives charity with the bitter hatred of a victim to his blackmailer. The receiver of free money is subjected to harassment, insult, and profound humiliation. Newspapers are enlisted to heap scorn on the arrogant bastards who choose to beg instead of starve or let their children starve. It is made clear that the poor seek charity as a great and sordid chicanery in which they delight. And there are some who do. As there are people who take delight in sticking hot needles deep into their abdomens, swallow pieces of broken bottles. A special taste. Speaking for humanity in general, the poor accept charity with a shame and loss of self-respect that is truly pitiful.

It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.

Death is another story. I will never make a joke about death. It is beyond my powers.

So Don Corleone himself was not angry. He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that

Tell my father I wish to be his son.

Every man has but one destiny Veto Corleone

Don had made a fewer mistakes and learned from every one of them

I find the only thing that really stands up, better than gambling, better than booze, better than women, is reading.

Every man measures his own greed.

He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself.

When we are children, when we are young, it is natural to love our friends, to be generous to them, to forgive their faults.. But as we grow old and have to earn our bread, friendship does not endure so easily. We must always be on our guard. Our elders no longer look after us, we are no longer content with those simple pleasures of children. Pride grows in us – we wish to become great or powerful or rich, or simply to guard ourself against misfortune.

Tell the truth, all Sicilians prefer smelling the shit of their villages to the best perfumes in Paris. What am I doing here? I could have escaped to Brazil like some others. Ah, we love where we are born, we Sicilians, but Sicily does not love us.

A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns.

Life is Beautiful

Every man has one destiny,

The Don knew that love is not a reliable emotion to matter how deep. Love does not ensure gratitude, does not ensure obedience, does not provide harmony in so difficult a world. No one understood this better than Don Clericuzio.

Brasi left the room. Two of his men assisted the midwife and the baby was born, the mother was exhausted and went into a deep sleep. Brasi was summoned and Filomena, who had wrapped the newborn child in an extra blanket, extended the bundle to him and said, "If you're the father, take her. My work is finished." Brasi glared at her, malevolent, insanity stamped on his face. "Yes, I'm the father," he said. "But I don't want any of that race to live. Take it down to the basement and throw it into the furnace.

There are things that have to be done and you do them and you never talk about them. You don't try to justify them. They can't be justified. You just do them. Then you forget it.

Some honorable men spend their whole life preparing for a supreme act of treachery

Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .

Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.

It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service. Now

Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.

I want to tell you a story. I have no other vanity.

Men in general sooner forget the lost their matrimony than the death of their father

Gambling is not as destructive as war or as boring as pornography. It is not as immoral as business or as suicidal as watching television. And the percentages are better than religion.

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.

They made it personal when they shot Pop. It is not business, it's personal.

Luca Brasi was such a man. But he was such an extraordinary man that for a long time nobody could kill him. Most of these people are of no concern to ourselves but a Brasi is a powerful weapon to be used. The trick is that since he does not fear death and indeed looks for it, then the trick is to make yourself the only person in the world that he truly desires not to kill him. He has only that one fear, not of death, but that you may be the one to kill him. He is yours then.

Destiny had decided that he was to become a Don and had brought Fanucci to him to set him on his destined path.

Life is so beautiful

I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.

Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.

We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.

...what is written on paper affects history. But not life. Life is a different history.

Preparing the communal evening meal sometimes caused arguments. Every village in Sicily had a different recipe for squid and eels, disagreed on what herbs should be disbarred from the tomato sauce. And whether sausages should ever be baked.

But you're the toughest son of a b!&€# i've ever seen.You never let anybody get near you.You never let anybody know what you really think.

it's just business nothing personal...

The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.

The gunman said, Fabrizzio,Michael Corleone sends you his regards.

A man's primary duty in life is to earn his own living, but to what purpose if he did not have a wife and children?

We are a family, and the loyalty of the family must come before anything and everyone else. For if we honor that commitment, we will never be vanquished-but if we falter in that loyalty we will all be condemned.

Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone

going to the mattresses

Nino?" When Johnny didn't answer, the Don went on. "Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that. If you had built up a wall of friendships you wouldn't have to ask me to help.

Wasn't it true that Sometimes the greatest misfortunes brought unforseen rewards? -Don Corleone

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.