Paul Castellano to Joseph "Piney" Armone during a recorded talk:

Castellano:"You only live once, Piney. Am I right? You don't get to do everything. No one does. Me, I got no regrets. The thing I wish, I wish I had more education. I wish I was more, ya know, educated. But I say that now. At the time, what I wanted was the streets, so I took 'em. I always felt, if there's something you want to do, do it now. Don't fuck around waiting. Am I right?"

Armone:"Yeah, Paul, you're right."

Castellano:"But at the same time, let's not kid ourselves.
This life of ours, this is a wonderful life.
If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey, that's great. But its very, very unpredictable. There's so many ways you can screw it up. So you gotta think, ya gotta be patient. A lotta guys they're yanking their zipper before their dick's put away, then they wonder why they got snagged. And they don't know when to zipper their fucking mouth shut, either.
I tell 'em 'You listen, you learn. You talk, you teach.' Am I right, Piney?"

Armone:"Yeah, Paul, you're right."

Castellano:"Because there's just so many fucking things that can blow up on you."

Armone:"Yeah, Paul, there are."

Castellano:"There's so many ways they can get you."

other recorded conversation..

Castellano:Look, when we sit down to clip a guy, we have to remember what's at stake here. There's some hazards. Guys forget that. They get a guy behind in his vig payments, they get a hard on about it, right away they want to whack him.
Why? Just because they're pissed off, they're aggravated. But what I say is:
"Hey, you're making a living with this guy. He gets you aggravated, and right away you want to use the hammer!
How do you get your fucking money then?"
It's means and ends. The idea is to collect.

Armone:But you know, Paul, I think some guys just take so much pleasure from breaking heads that they'd almost rather not get paid.

Castellano:Yeah, yeah. We got some guys like that. Dick fists, I call 'em. I'm always sayin' to 'em,
"Just to take a guy out, that ain't the point." Because I tell ya', Piney,
anytime I can remember that we knocked guys out, it cost us.
It's like there's a tax on it or some shit.
Somebody gets arrested. Or there's a fuckup, which means we gotta clip another guy, maybe a guy we don't wanna lose.

source: http://www.gambino.com/bio/paulcastellano.htm

Gotta say im off for tonight!cheers King