Top 100 Puzo Quotes
#1. I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.
Francis Ford Coppola
#2. I didn't invent the fear of sharks; it's as old as mankind, and that - to take that responsibility would mean that Mario Puzo should take the blame for the Mafia.
Peter Benchley
#3. 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.
Mario Puzo
#4. it's just business nothing personal...
Mario Puzo
#5. Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.
Mario Puzo
#6. ...what is written on paper affects history. But not life. Life is a different history.
Mario Puzo
#7. Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the day fresh, get rid of your wife.
Mario Puzo
#8. I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
Mario Puzo
#9. The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No one had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable.
Mario Puzo
#10. Woman and children can afford to be careless, men can not-Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#11. What is past is past. never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.
Mario Puzo
#12. Revenge is a dish which taste best when served cold.
Mario Puzo
#13. Wasn't it true that Sometimes the greatest misfortunes brought unforseen rewards? -Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#14. None of us here want to see our children follow in our footsteps, it's too hard a life.
Mario Puzo
#15. 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.
Mario Puzo
#16. I believe in friendship and I'm willing to show my friendship first.
Mario Puzo
#17. Anybody. She uses her body like I use the loose
Mario Puzo
#18. 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.
Mario Puzo
#19. 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.
Mario Puzo
#20. 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.
Mario Puzo
#21. Death is another story. I will never make a joke about death. It is beyond my powers.
Mario Puzo
#22. Destiny had decided that he was to become a Don and had brought Fanucci to him to set him on his destined path.
Mario Puzo
#23. Oh, what a wicked world it is that drives a man to sin.
Mario Puzo
#24. 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
Mario Puzo
#25. Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.
Mario Puzo
#26. You can't hide the thunderbolt. When it hits you, everybody can see it. Christ, man, don't be ashamed of it, some men pray for the thunderbolt. You're a very lucky fellow. - Calo
Mario Puzo
#27. Men in general sooner forget the lost their matrimony than the death of their father
Mario Puzo
#29. A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
Mario Puzo
#30. 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.
Mario Puzo
#31. And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
Mario Puzo
#32. Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her?Never mind physically but betray her in his mind,in the very "poetry of his soul".Well,it's not easy but men do it all the time.
Mario Puzo
#33. Love is like the little red toy wagon you get for your Christmas or your sixth birthday. It makes you deliriously happy and you just can't leave it alone. But sooner or later the wheels come off. Then you leave it in a corner and forget it. Falling in love is great. Being in love is a disaster
Mario Puzo
#34. 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 friendship you wouldn't have to ask me to help. - Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#35. I do not seek it or desire it. If I must, I will accept the punishment for all my sins.
Mario Puzo
#36. have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a bloc of people to vote for them.
Mario Puzo
#38. 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.
Mario Puzo
#39. Ah, men understand friendship more than we woman.
Mario Puzo
#40. 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
Mario Puzo
#41. A lawyer can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns.
Mario Puzo
#42. Every man has but one destiny Veto Corleone
Mario Puzo
#43. Power wears out those who do not have it.
Mario Puzo
#44. Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#45. What would the world come to if people kept carrying grudges against all reason? That has been the cross of Sicily, where men are so busy with vendettas they have no time to earn bread for their families.
Mario Puzo
#46. I have no such powers. If I did I would be more merciful than God, believe me.
Mario Puzo
#47. Forgive. Forget. Life is full of misfortunes.
Mario Puzo
#48. Some honorable men spend their whole life preparing for a supreme act of treachery
Mario Puzo
#49. He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.
Mario Puzo
#51. When they come... they come at what you love.
Mario Puzo
#52. 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.
Mario Puzo
#53. I want to tell you a story. I have no other vanity.
Mario Puzo
#54. Neri was content, satisfied that he lived in a world that properly rewarded a man who did his duty.
Mario Puzo
#55. Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.
Mario Puzo
#56. Mercy is a vice, a pretension to powers we do not have. Those who give mercy commit an unpardonable offense to the victim. And that is not our duty here on earth.
Mario Puzo
#57. All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition.
Mario Puzo
#58. 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.
Mario Puzo
#59. 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.
Mario Puzo
#60. 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.
Mario Puzo
#61. That's like bringing a guy up from the minors to pitch the World Series.
Mario Puzo
#62. The Don always taught that when a man was generous, he must show the generosity as personal.
Mario Puzo
#63. I find the only thing that really stands up, better than gambling, better than booze, better than women, is reading.
Mario Puzo
#64. Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
Mario Puzo
#65. A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
Mario Puzo
#66. Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
Mario Puzo
#67. A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man
Mario Puzo
#68. The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.
Mario Puzo
#69. 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.
Mario Puzo
#70. Life is a comical business, and there is
nothing funnier than love traveling through time.
Mario Puzo
#71. I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.
Mario Puzo
#72. Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster
Mario Puzo
#73. Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind.
Mario Puzo
#74. Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.
Mario Puzo
#75. The meeting would be safe as a wedding.
Mario Puzo
#76. Behind every successful fortune;There is Crime.
Mario Puzo
#77. Everything you do in life use percentage as your god.
Mario Puzo
#78. Lampone made a gesture that said he would be patient, knowing his reward was certain.
Mario Puzo
#80. I believe in America. America's made my fortune.
Mario Puzo
#81. Power isn't everything ...its the only thing.
Mario Puzo
#82. I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more.
Mario Puzo
#83. Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!
Mario Puzo
#84. 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.
Mario Puzo
#85. She was the only person in the world who could make him act against his own nature
Mario Puzo
#86. The fact of the matter is that I wanted to hold a grudge in some funny kind of way.Against everybody.
Mario Puzo
#87. 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.
Mario Puzo
#88. We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again.
Mario Puzo
#90. 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
Mario Puzo
#91. ..for Justice, we must go to Don Corleone.
Mario Puzo
#93. Nothing was more calming, more conducive to pure reason, than the atmosphere of money.
Mario Puzo
#94. It's more important that you grow up to be a man," he said, "than to be a genius.
Mario Puzo
#95. The gunman said, Fabrizzio,Michael Corleone sends you his regards.
Mario Puzo
#96. 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 a 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no.' You have to take time and trouble.
Mario Puzo
#97. 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.
Mario Puzo
#98. Santino, come here. What's the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft with all that comedy you are playing with that young girl. Never tell anyone outside the Family what you're thinking again. Go on.
Mario Puzo
#99. 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.
Mario Puzo
#100. Do not count on the gratitude of deeds done for people in the past,you must make them grateful for things you will do for them in the future.
Mario Puzo
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