Quotes from Mario Puzo

Don Tommasino also controlled the water rights in the area and vetoed the local building of any new dams by the Roman government. Such dams would ruin the lucrative business of selling water from the artesian wells he controlled, make water too cheap, ruin the whole important water economy so laboriously built up over hundreds of years.

He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful.

These things have to happen once every ten years or so. It gets rid of the bad blood. And then if we let them push us around on the little things they wanta take over everything. You gotta stop them at the beginning. Like they shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they were just asking for big trouble when they let him get away with that." Michael

La amistad lo es todo. La amistad vale más que el talento. Vale más que el Gobierno. La amistad vale casi tanto como la familia. Nunca lo olvides.

My only business is to save souls in danger of hell. What a man does is his own business.

Una vez había oído decir a Don Corleone que un abogado, con su cartera de mano, podía robar más que un centenar de hombres con metralletas.

The victory of the Corleone Family was complete. During that same twenty-four-hour period Clemenza and Lampone turned loose their regimes and punished the infiltrators of the Corleone domains.

showing his gratitude.

Sá»± tr? thù là má»™t m?n ?n càng ?? nguá»™i càng ngon.

He realized that at the root of Guiliano's romanticism was the brilliant penetration of paranoia.

checked the bins in the holy relic workshop

He felt that flush of antagonism a poor man feels for a rich woman who is in some way asserting her superiority to him because of a wealth and social position.

Quiero que Mike sepa que fue por negocios —dijo—. Nada personal. Siempre sentí una gran simpatía hacia él.

I was forty-five years old and tired of being an artist. Besides, I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. It was really time to grow up and sell out as Lenny Bruce once advised. So I told my editors 'OK, I'll write a book about the mafia, just give me some money to get started'.

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

You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret.

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.

Es r?kojos k? man ir vislab?k. Un vislab?k ir b?t vienk?ršam. Pavisam, pavisam vienk?ršam. Un, kad vajag ko ?pašu, tam j?b?t pavisam, pavisam ?pašam.

I cannot wait an eternity for happiness.

Never make a threat. Reason with people." The word "reason" sounded so much better in Italian, ragione, to rejoin. The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek.

A life without flowers is no life at all, for beauty is more necessary than we can imagine.

long race with death

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.

they would never shame a statue of the Virgin Mary, but in the hot blood of vendetta they would shotgun the Pope himself for breaking omerta