“And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.”

“Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.”

“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”

“Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.”

“A quote from Tolstoy someone reminded of:"A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction".”

“...at every twirl a year fell from his shoulders; soon he felt back at the age of twenty, when in that very same ballroom he had danced with Stella before he knew disappointment, boredom, and the rest. For a second, that night, death seemed to him once more "something that happens to others."...”