Top 200 Mario Puzo Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “They made it personal when they shot Pop. It is not business, it’s personal.”

— Mario Puzo

102. “It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart.”

— Mario Puzo

103. “What would the world come to if people kept carrying grudges against all reason? That has been the cross of Sicily, where men are so busy with vendettas they have no time to earn bread for their families.”

— Mario Puzo

104. “It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.”

— Mario Puzo

105. “You know, it’s a funny thing. You can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, and even eat yourself to death. But that’s all acceptable. The only thing you can’t do medically is screw yourself to death, and yet that’s where they put all the obstacles.”

— Mario Puzo

106. “Everyone is responsible for everything he does.”

— Mario Puzo

107. “Among reasonable men problems of business could always be solved.”

— Mario Puzo

108. “Genius had its rewards.”

— Mario Puzo

109. “Nothing was more calming, more conducive to pure reason, than the atmosphere of money.”

— Mario Puzo

110. “He wanted the world to believe that he was a horse rider. So let him ride his horses at the bottom of the ocean.”

— Mario Puzo

111. “The don knew that love is not a reliable emotion to matter how deep. Love does not ensure gratitude, does not ensure obedience, does not provide harmony in so difficult a world. No one understood this better than Don Clericuzio. To inspire true love, one also had to be feared. Love alone was contemptible, it was nothing if it did not also include trust and obedience. What good was love to him if it did not acknowledge his rule?”

— Mario Puzo

112. “The meeting would be safe as a wedding.”

— Mario Puzo

113. “Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that.”

— Mario Puzo

114. “I do not seek it or desire it. If I must, I will accept the punishment for all my sins.”

— Mario Puzo

115. “Michael Corleone understood for the first time why men like his father chose to become thieves and murderers rather than members of the legal society. The poverty and fear and degradation were too awful to be acceptable to any man of spirit.”

— Mario Puzo

116. “The trick is that since he does not fear death and indeed looks for it, then the trick is to make yourself the only person in the world that he truly desires not to kill him. He has only that one fear, not of death, but that you may be the one to kill him. He is yours then.”

— Mario Puzo

117. “Mothers are like cops. They always believe the worst.”

— Mario Puzo

118. “A belief in one’s own virtue is far more dangerous than a belief in one’s cunning.”

— Mario Puzo

119. “He was not a bad man, he was a good husband and father, but constant worry about his investments, about the money he earned, about the inevitable expenses that came with being a man of property had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he was in a constant state of irritation.”

— Mario Puzo

120. “The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence.”

— Mario Puzo

121. “If the Clericuzio Family was the Holy Church for the Mafia empires scattered over the United States, then the head of the Family, Don Domenico Clericuzio was the Pope, admired not only for his intelligence but for his strength.”

— Mario Puzo

122. “A life is sacred or it isn’t. We can’t adjust what we believe just because it causes us pain.”

— Mario Puzo

123. “Thank God you’re poor, Mom.”

— Mario Puzo

124. “His wife killed him. Too simple. His childhood, his mother, his father, his siblings? Even if the scars of childhood heal, you never grow out of being vulnerable. Age is no shield against trauma.”

— Mario Puzo

125. “But della Rovere frowned and said, “Heed my warning, Guido Feltra. He’s full of the devil, this son of the church.”

— Mario Puzo

126. “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

127. “It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service. Now.”

— Mario Puzo

128. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”

— Mario Puzo

129. “It was not intelligent to damage the ego of a young boy. You can, with some impunity, insult an older man who has already been humiliated by life itself and will not take to heart the small slights of another human being. But a young man thinks these offences mortal.”

— Mario Puzo

130. “Yet he thought, if I die saying ” Life is beautiful”, then nothing else is important.”

— Mario Puzo

131. “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

132. “Ah, men understand friendship more than we woman.”

— Mario Puzo

133. “I would trust you with my whole fortune,” he told the president. “I would trust you with my life and the welfare of my children. It is inconceivable to me that you would ever trick me or otherwise betray me. My whole world, all my faith in my judgment of human character would collapse.”

— Mario Puzo

134. “She cannot return your love. She does not live in our world. She does not even live in the world of animals. She lives on a different star, absolutely alone.”

— Mario Puzo

135. “Don Corleone did this by putting a pistol to the forehead of the band leader and assuring him with the utmost seriousness that either his signature or his brains would rest on that document in exactly one minute. Les Halley signed.”

— Mario Puzo

136. “Do not exercise power because it is easy to your hand. And do not get carried away with a certainty of victory when your intellect tells you there is even a hint of tragedy.”

— Mario Puzo

137. “Anybody. She uses her body like I use the loose.”

— Mario Puzo

138. “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

139. “Other people veto their existence. I don’t let anyone do that.”

— Mario Puzo

140. “But up until that time I want you just to follow my lead and don’t worry. There are negotiations going on that will solve problems that you think are not solvable. So just be a little patient.” Tessio.”

— Mario Puzo

141. “The Don sighed. “Well, then I can’t talk to you about how you should behave. Don’t you want to finish school, don’t you want to be a lawyer? Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.”

— Mario Puzo

142. “As bread is sweet to us,” he said, “so is the blood of the poor to the rich who drink it.” It.”

— Mario Puzo

143. “For the Sicilian believes that vengeance is the only true justice, and that it is always merciless.”

— Mario Puzo

144. “In short, the gabbellotto was a mafioso who for a certain sum of money protected the real estate of the rich from all claims made on it by the poor, legal or illegal. When any poor peasant tried to implement the law which permitted him to buy uncultivated land, the gabbellotto frightened him off with threats of bodily harm or death. It was that simple.”

— Mario Puzo

145. “Once anybody makes up their mind to kill then there’s no other problem. That’s the hard part, making up your mind.”

— Mario Puzo

146. “Neri was content, satisfied that he lived in a world that properly rewarded a man who did his duty.”

— Mario Puzo

147. “But above all with a patriarchal love for his followers. Virtue was rewarded. Injuries avenged. A livelihood guaranteed.”

— Mario Puzo

148. “This country has been good to me.”

— Mario Puzo

149. “Mafia,” in Arabic, means a place of sanctuary, and the word took its place in the Sicilian language when the Saracens ruled the country in the tenth century.”

— Mario Puzo

150. “Pope Alexander smiled. He seemed more amused with the story than horrified. “The Baglioni are true believers,” he said. “They believe in paradise. Such a great gift. How otherwise can man bear this moral life? Unfortunately, such a belief also gives evil men the courage to commit great crimes in the name of good and God.”

— Mario Puzo