Mario Puzo citations

“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.- Don Corleone”

“Great men are not born great, they grow great…”

“Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Never let anyone know what you are thinking.”

“Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!”

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

“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.”

“Take the gun. Leave the cannoli.”

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

“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”

“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.”