"One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this. -Don Quixote."
— Cervantes

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

...

Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important."
— Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

"Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old."
— Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

"Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult."
— Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

"When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude."
— Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

""Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.""
— Carlos Casteneda

""No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no.""
— Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

"He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful."
— Don DeLillo

"I don't see what my arse has to do with enchantings!"
— Cervantes

""...maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.""
— Cervantes

"When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too;
In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, / But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis."
— George Gordon Byron

"Very well; and pray who sent you on this errand?

Why, the renowned knight Don Quixote de La Mancha, who redresses wrongs, and gives drink to the hungry and meat to the thirsty."
— Sancho Panza to himself