“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 , The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Last update Dec. 10, 2022. History

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Mario Puzo 53

American Novelist 1920–1999

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Context: If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

“Steel can be tempered and hardened, and so can men. In this world of struggle, which was not designed for softies, a man must be harder than what hits him. Yes, he must be diamond-hard. Then he'll not be "fed up" with his little personal troubles.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 236
1950s and later

“Thomas watched him for a few minutes. Pop was good-looking, muscular, and his hair was almost gold even though it was getting a little thin on top. Thomas must have taken after his mother, whoever she was.”

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“Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious
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“To be a successful father … there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.”

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“I can remember the horror which came over my parents when they became convinced that it was so with me [that I wanted to be a writer]—and properly so. What you have and they had to look forward to is life made intolerable by a mean, cantankerous, opinionated, moody, quarrelsome, unreasonable, nervous, flighty, irresponsible son. You will get no loyalty, little consideration and desperately little attention from him. In fact you will want to kill him. I'm sure my father and mother often must have considered poisoning me.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (1969)

“Part of how we come to take command of our world, to take command of our environment, to make these tools by which we're able to do this, is we ask ourselves questions about it the whole time. So this man starts to ask himself questions. "This world," he says, "so who made it?" Now, of course he thinks that, because he makes things himself. So he's looking for someone who would have made this world. He says, "Well, so who would have made this world? Well, it must be something a little like me. Obviously much much bigger. And necessarily invisible. But he would have made it. Now why did he make it?" Now we always ask ourselves "why?" because we look for intention around us; because we always intend– we do something with intention. We boil an egg in order to eat it. So we look at the rocks, and we look at the trees, and we wonder what intention is here even though it doesn't have intention.”

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“Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.”

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Referring to his former Cabinet colleague Dr Michael Bassett, who was delivered by his Doctor father.
Source: David Lange, My Life (2005), p. 98

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Jack: Cheap? When I was a kid, we were made to stay away from school on Empire Days so we wouldn't have to wave one of those little Union Jacks. We were the richest country in the world then, or so I'm told, and my old man bow-legged from malnutrition. Us kids nearly died laughing.”

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