Quotes from Mario Puzo

You are alive and he is dead. Always remember that and live your life not to be a hero but to remain alive.

a man has but one destiny

he did not have that personal magnetism, that animal force

He was in extremis. He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful.

had voided itself.

Bet, ak vai, cik ?auna bija pasaule, kas lika cilv?kam gr?kot.

But there were too many factions, too many special interests that conflicted.

going to the mattresses

used to tell people, 'Don't eat so much or you'll die, don't smoke so much or you'll die, don't work so much or you'll die, don't drink so much or you'll die.' Nobody listens. You know why? Because I don't say, 'You will die tomorrow.

Like any other parent he wanted his children to go to better schools and mix with better companions

Don Croce immediately led him into the garden, for like all Sicilians he ate his meals out of doors when he could.

All Sicilians are good eaters, when there is food to be had, and one of the few jokes people dared to make about Don Croce was that he would rather eat well than kill an enemy.

At one of these shrines, Michael saw a woman on her knees praying, her husband sitting in their donkey-drawn cart guzzling a bottle of wine. The donkey's head dropped like a martyr's.

A man who commits a criminal act exercises the power of God over another human being. Then it becomes the decision of the victim whether to accept this other god in his life.

The mouth was not so much cruel as lifeless; thin, rubbery and the color of veal.

Drop the gun, pick up the cannoli

There are honorable men who spend all their lives preparing for a supreme act of treachery

wet, turgid flesh.

Thank God you're poor, Mom.

But great men are not born great, they grow great, and so it was with Vito Corleone.

Any profession was worthy of respect to men who for centuries earned bread by the sweat of their brows.

Never get angry," the Don had instructed. "Never make a threat. Reason with people.

Why couldn't he get a straight answer from any of them? Because this was Sicily, he thought. Sicilians had a horror of truth.

After all, education is the key to a higher civilization.