Mario Puzo Quotes

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

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

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

Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.

Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults

A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.

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

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.

I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.

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.

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.

Never let anyone know what you are thinking.

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

Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.

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.

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.

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

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.

Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!

Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Tom, don't let anybody kid you. 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. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.

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

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

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

Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster

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.

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.

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

In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.

He should be careful. It's dangerous to be an honest man.

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.

Woman and children can afford to be careless, men can not.

Life is like a box of Hand grenades,You never know what will blow you to kingdom come

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.

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.

it's just business nothing personal...

Fredo you're my older brother and I love you. But don't ever take sides against the family...

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.

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 prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.

When they come... they come at what you love.

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

Forgive. Forget. Life is full of misfortunes.

Life is Beautiful

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

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

Power wears out those who do not have it.

Oh, what a wicked world it is that drives a man to sin.

Any man can turn traitor.

‎"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.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

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

Mothers are like cops. They always believe the worst.

Tell my father I wish to be his son.

Like many business men of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient.

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

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.

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

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

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

Your enemies always get strong on what you leave behind.

Every man has but one destiny

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

You let women dictate your actions and they are not competent in this world, though certainly they will be saints in heaven while we men burn in hell.

Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind.

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

You lived like a fool and you have come to a fool’s end.

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.

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

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

She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.

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.

Ah, men understand friendship more than we woman.

If anything in this life is certain...if history has taught us anything, it's that you cn kill anyone.

Life is a comical business, and there is nothing funnier than love traveling through time.

She was the only person in the world who could make him act against his own nature

The truth now. He was disappointed in human beings. He had seen too many betrayals, too many pitiful weaknesses, too much greed for money and fame. The falseness between lovers, husbands and wifes, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters

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

Everything you do in life use percentage as your god.

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

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

None of us here want to see our children follow in our footsteps, it’s too hard a life.

if I can die saying, “Life is so beautiful,” then nothing else is important.

Santino, never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking. Never let them know what you have under your fingernails. I think your brain is going soft from all that comedy you play with that young girl. Stop it and pay attention to business. Now get out of my sight.

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.

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

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.

But let me say this. I am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing but I must confess it here. And so if some unlucky accident should befall my youngest son, if some police officer should accidentally shoot him, if he should hang himself while in his jail cell, if new witnesses appear to testify to his guilt, my superstition will make me feel that it was the result of the ill will still borne me by some people here. Let me go further. If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning I will blame some of the people here. If his plane show fall into the sea or his ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean, if he should catch a mortal fever, if his automobile should be struck by a train, such is my superstition that I would blame the ill will felt by people here. Gentlemen, that ill will, that bad luck, I could never forgive. But aside from that let me swear by the souls of my grandchildren that I will never break the peace we have made. After all, are we or are we not better men than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless millions of men in our lifetimes?

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.

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.

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.