Mario Puzo Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

He's a businessman... I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.

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

Mario Puzo
Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the next day fresh, get rid of your wife.

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

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

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

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
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

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

Mario Puzo
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.

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

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

Mario Puzo
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.

Mario Puzo
Never talk about what you are going to do until after you have written it.

Mario Puzo
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 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

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

Mario Puzo
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.

Mario Puzo
Never trust anybody but yourself. That includes critics, friends, and especially publishers.

Mario Puzo
There are things that have to be done and you do them and you don't talk about them. You don't try to justify them. They can't be justified. You just do them. Then you forget them.

Mario Puzo
He felt the table was having a run of bad luck, but he knew. Gronevelt would never accept that explanation. Gronevelt believed that the house could not lose over the long run, that the laws of percentage were not subject to chance. As gamblers believed mystically in their luck so Gronevelt believed in percentages.

Mario Puzo
"You got a ninety percent chance," he said. Osno said quickly, "How do you get that figure?" He always did that whenever somebody pulled a statistic on him. He hated statisticians.

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

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

Mario Puzo
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