“Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .”
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, The Last Don“A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”
Mario Puzo“Friendship and money: oil and water.”
Mario Puzo“Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”
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“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“Don had made a fewer mistakes and learned from every one of them”
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“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“Not to be rich, but to have money; to have money like a wall to put your back to, and then face the world.”
Mario Puzo