Top 100 Puzo's 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. Behind every successful fortune;There is Crime.
Mario Puzo
#3. Everything you do in life use percentage as your god.
Mario Puzo
#4. The meeting would be safe as a wedding.
Mario Puzo
#5. Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.
Mario Puzo
#6. Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind.
Mario Puzo
#7. Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster
Mario Puzo
#8. I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.
Mario Puzo
#9. Life is a comical business, and there is
nothing funnier than love traveling through time.
Mario Puzo
#10. 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
#11. The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.
Mario Puzo
#12. A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man
Mario Puzo
#13. Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
Mario Puzo
#14. A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
Mario Puzo
#15. Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
Mario Puzo
#16. I find the only thing that really stands up, better than gambling, better than booze, better than women, is reading.
Mario Puzo
#17. The Don always taught that when a man was generous, he must show the generosity as personal.
Mario Puzo
#18. That's like bringing a guy up from the minors to pitch the World Series.
Mario Puzo
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition.
Mario Puzo
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. Neri was content, satisfied that he lived in a world that properly rewarded a man who did his duty.
Mario Puzo
#26. I want to tell you a story. I have no other vanity.
Mario Puzo
#27. If anything in this life is certain ... if history has taught us anything, it's that you cn kill anyone.
Mario Puzo
#28. 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?
Mario Puzo
#29. You can't let other men impose their will on you or life's not worth living.
Mario Puzo
#30. You lived like a fool and you have come to a fool's end.
Mario Puzo
#31. It can be argued that man's instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees.
Mario Puzo
#32. Walter Kaylin was great! He was outrageous, he just carried it off. He'd have this one guy killing a thousand other guys. Then they beat him into the ground, you think he's dead, but he rises up again and kills another thousand guys.
Mario Puzo
#33. He should be careful. It's dangerous to be an honest man.
Mario Puzo
#34. 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
#35. No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no.
Mario Puzo
#36. Freddie's face was anxious."Mike,you sure about Moe Greene selling?He never mentioned it me and he loves the business.I really don't think that he'll sell."
Michael said quietly,"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."
The words were said casually yet the effect was chilling.
Mario Puzo
#37. Don Corleone had promised his godson he would get the part and Don Corleone had never, to Hagen's knowledge, broken his word in such matters.
Mario Puzo
#38. He had been a tough teenager in New York's Hell's Kitchen.
Mario Puzo
#39. They made it personal when they shot Pop. It is not business, it's personal.
Mario Puzo
#40. 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
#41. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell.
Mario Puzo
#42. A man's first duty is to keep himself alive. Then comes what everyone calls honor.
Mario Puzo
#43. 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.
Mario Puzo
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. It's more important that you grow up to be a man," he said, "than to be a genius.
Mario Puzo
#47. I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more.
Mario Puzo
#48. Power isn't everything ...its the only thing.
Mario Puzo
#49. I believe in America. America's made my fortune.
Mario Puzo
#51. Lampone made a gesture that said he would be patient, knowing his reward was certain.
Mario Puzo
#52. None of us here want to see our children follow in our footsteps, it's too hard a life.
Mario Puzo
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. Oh, what a wicked world it is that drives a man to sin.
Mario Puzo
#57. 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
#58. Death is another story. I will never make a joke about death. It is beyond my powers.
Mario Puzo
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. Anybody. She uses her body like I use the loose
Mario Puzo
#63. I believe in friendship and I'm willing to show my friendship first.
Mario Puzo
#64. 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
#65. Men in general sooner forget the lost their matrimony than the death of their father
Mario Puzo
#66. Wasn't it true that Sometimes the greatest misfortunes brought unforseen rewards? -Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#67. Revenge is a dish which taste best when served cold.
Mario Puzo
#68. 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
#69. Woman and children can afford to be careless, men can not-Don Corleone
Mario Puzo
#70. 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
#71. I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
Mario Puzo
#72. 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
#73. ...what is written on paper affects history. But not life. Life is a different history.
Mario Puzo
#74. Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.
Mario Puzo
#75. it's just business nothing personal...
Mario Puzo
#76. 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
#77. Ah, men understand friendship more than we woman.
Mario Puzo
#79. 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
#80. Some honorable men spend their whole life preparing for a supreme act of treachery
Mario Puzo
#81. Forgive. Forget. Life is full of misfortunes.
Mario Puzo
#82. I have no such powers. If I did I would be more merciful than God, believe me.
Mario Puzo
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. Power wears out those who do not have it.
Mario Puzo
#86. Every man has but one destiny Veto Corleone
Mario Puzo
#87. A lawyer can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns.
Mario Puzo
#88. 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
#89. When they come... they come at what you love.
Mario Puzo
#90. 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
#92. 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
#93. I do not seek it or desire it. If I must, I will accept the punishment for all my sins.
Mario Puzo
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
Mario Puzo
#98. 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
#99. A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
Mario Puzo
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