Mario Puzo Quotes

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

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

~ Mario Puzo

Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.

~ Mario Puzo

I have no such powers. If I did I would be more merciful than God, believe me.

~ Mario Puzo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.

~ Mario Puzo

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.

~ Mario Puzo

A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man

~ Mario Puzo

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

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.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo

The fact of the matter is that I wanted to hold a grudge in some funny kind of way.Against everybody.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo

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.

~ Mario Puzo

And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo

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

Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo

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.

~ Mario Puzo

At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone he knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.

~ Mario Puzo

At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo

Kurt Cilke liked dogs because they could not conspire. They could not hide hostility, and they were not cunning. They did not lie awake at night planning to rob and murder other dogs. Treachery was beyond their scope.

~ Mario Puzo

‎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.

~ Mario Puzo

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

He said to the cardinal, I'm a peasant, not instructed in the ways of heaven. But I have never broken my word. And you, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, with all your holy garments and crosses of Jesus, lied to me like a heathen Moor. Your sacred office alone will not save your life.

~ Mario Puzo

Never show anger at slight,Tell nothing.Earn Respect from everyone by deeds,not Words.Respect the members of your Blood Family.Gambling was Recreation,Not a way to earn a Living.Love your Father,your Mother,your Sister but beware of Loving any other Woman than your Wife.And a Wife was a woman who bore your Children.And once that happened to You,your Life was Forfeit to give them their daily bread

~ Mario Puzo

Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

~ Mario Puzo

Friendship and money: oil and water.

~ Mario Puzo

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

~ Mario Puzo