Santino, never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking. Never let them know what you have under your fingernails. I think your brain is going soft from all that comedy you play with that young girl. Stop it and pay attention to business. Now get out of my sight.

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults

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

Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.

Gambling is not as destructive as war or as boring as pornography. It is not as immoral as business or as suicidal as watching television. And the percentages are better than religion.

He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.

I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.