The Shawshank Redemption is a classic, Andy Dufresne is sent to prison for the murder of his wife, though innocent. This movie is about his experiences and eventual escape.
-
-
-
Andy Dufresne: It’s my life. Don’t you understand? IT’S MY LIFE!
-
Red: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
-
Warden Samuel Norton: I want him found. Not tomorrow, not after breakfast - *now*.
-
Red: I like to think the last thing that went through his head - other than that bullet - was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.
-
Brooks: Dear Fellas, I can’t believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid but now they’re everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
-
Red: There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I’m the guy who can get it for you. Cigarettes, a bag of reefer if that’s your thing, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid’s high school graduation, damn near anything within reason. Yes sir, I’m a regular Sears and Roebuck.
-
Andy Dufresne: Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. -
Captain Hadley: What is your malfunction, you fat barrel of monkey spunk?
-
Red: The guard simply didn’t notice. Neither did I. I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes?
-
Warden Samuel Norton: Lord! It’s a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind!
-
Andy Dufresne: She was beautiful. God I loved her. I just didn’t know how to show it, that’s all. I killed her, Red. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I drove her away. And that’s why she died, because of me.
-
Floyd: Red, I do believe you’re talking out of your ass.
-
Andy Dufresne: All I ask is three beers apiece for each of my co-workers…I think a man workin’ outdoors feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds. That’s only my opinion.
-
Captain Hadley: If I hear so much as a mouse fart in here the rest of the night I swear by God and sonny Jesus you will all visit the infirmary. Every last motherfucker in here.
-
Red: Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. That’s god-damn right. For the second time in my life, I am guilty of committing a crime. Parole violation. Of course, I doubt they’ll toss up any roadblocks for that. Not for an old crook like me.
-
Warden Samuel Norton: I believe in two things - discipline and the Bible. Here you’ll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.
-
Red: There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.
-
Captain Hadley: You’re gonna look real funny sucking my dick with no teeth.
-
Andy Dufresne: Mr. Hadley, do you trust your wife? Because if you do trust her, there’s no reason you can’t keep that thirty-five thousand…If you want to keep all that money, give it to your wife. The IRS allows a one-time only gift to your spouse for up to sixty thousand dollars…tax-free…you do need someone to set up the tax-free gift for ya, and it’ll cost ya, a lawyer for example…I suppose I could set it up for ya. That would save you some money. You get the forms, I’ll prepare them for ya, nearly free of charge.
-
Red: I must admit, I didn’t think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him. Looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man.
-
Brooks: Son, six wardens have been through here in my tenure, and I’ve learned one immutable, universal truth: Not one of them born whose asshole wouldn’t pucker up tighter than a snare drum when you ask them for funds.
-
Red: I have had some long nights in stir. Alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade… That was the longest night of my life…
-
Warden Samuel Norton: You are convicted felons. That’s why they sent you to me. Rule Number One: No blasphemy. I’ll not have the Lord’s name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules you’ll figure out as you go along.
-
Red: All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock-hammer damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through a wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.
-
Andy Dufresne: What you hear isn’t half of it. He’s got scams you haven’t even dreamed of. Kickbacks on his kickbacks. There’s a river of dirty money running through this place…I channel it, filter it, funnel it - Stocks, securities, tax-free municipals - I send that money out into the real world and when it comes back…by the time Norton retires, I will have made him a millionaire.
-
Red: His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound.
-
Warden Samuel Norton: Lord! It’s a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind. Nothin’ left but some damn rocks on the window sill and that cupcake on the wall. Let’s ask her. Maybe she knows. What say there, fussy-britches. Feel like talkin’? Oh, guess not. Why should she be any different? This is a conspiracy. That’s what this is. It’s one big damn conspiracy. And everyone’s in on it. Including her!
-
Red: Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time. That and the big god-damn poster. Like I said, in prison, a man’ll do most anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy’s favorite hobby was totin’ his wall out into the exercise yard a handful at a time.
-
Andy Dufresne: He’s a phantom, an apparition, second cousin to Harvey the rabbit. I conjured him out of thin air. He doesn’t exist, except on paper…Mr. Stephens has a birth certificate, driver’s license, social security number…
-
Red: I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
-
Warden Samuel Norton: Salvation lies within.
-
Andy Dufresne: I was in the path of the tornado… I just didn’t expect the storm would last as long as it has.
-
Andy Dufresne: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.
-
Red: Same old shit, different day
-
Heywood: I ain’t seen such a sorry lookin’ heap o’ maggot shit in all my life.
-
Tommy Williams: So I’m backing out the door, right, and I got the TV, like this; it was a big old thing, I couldn’t see shit; suddenly I hear this voice, “Police, kid, hands in the air.” You know, I was standing there, holdin’ on to that TV, so finally the voice says, “You hear what I said, boy?” And I say, “Yes sir, I sure did, but if I drop this fucking thing you got me on destruction of property too.”
-
Red: And that’s how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ‘49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o’clock in the morning, drinking icy cold Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison…The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the Lords of all Creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer…You could argue he’d done it to curry favor with the guards, or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me? I think he did it just to feel normal again, if only for a short while.
-
Captain Hadley: Uncle Sam. Reaching into your shirt and squeezing your tit till it’s purple.
-
Red: He’s just institutionalized…The man’s been in here fifty years, Heywood, fifty years. This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, he’s an educated man. Outside he’s nothin’ - just a used-up con with arthritis in both hands. Probably couldn’t get a library card if he tried…these walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ‘em. That’s ‘institutionalized’…They send you here for life and that’s exactly what they take, the part that counts anyway.
-
Andy Dufresne: The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.
-
Red: Things went on like that for a while. Prison life consists of routine, and then more routine. Every so often, Andy would show up with fresh bruises. The Sisters kept at him. Sometimes he was able to fight ‘em off, sometimes not. And that’s how it went for Andy. That was his routine.
-
Red: I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
-
Andy Dufresne: Sir, if I were ever to get out, I would never mention what goes on in here. I’d be just as indictable as you for laundering that money.
-
Red: I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn’t normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world. Like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say I liked Andy from the start.
-
Andy Dufresne: It’s a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. Open up a little hotel right on the beach. Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new. Take my guests out charter fishing…You know, in a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things.
-
Red: The first night’s the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell, when those bars slam home, that’s when you know it’s for real. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. Most new fish come close to madness the first night. Somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who’s it gonna be? It’s as good a thing to bet on as any, I guess. I had my money on Andy Dufresne. I remember my first night. Seems like a long time ago.
-
Andy Dufresne: There’s a big hayfield up near Buxton…One in particular. It’s got a long rock wall, a big oak tree at the north end. It’s like something out of a Robert Frost poem. It’s where I asked my wife to marry me. We went there for a picnic and made love under that oak and I asked and she said yes. Promise me, Red. If you ever get out, find that spot. In the base of that wall, you’ll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. A piece of black, volcanic glass. There’s something buried under it I want you to have.
-
Red: The man likes to play chess; let’s get him some rocks.
-
Red: That tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass.
-
Boggs: Hey, we all need friends in here. I could be a friend to you.
-
Red: Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine. Or maybe I just don’t want to. Five hundred yards. That’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
-
Red: Thirty years I’ve been asking permission to piss. I can’t squeeze a drop without say-so. Women, too, that’s the other thing. I forgot they were half the human race. There’s women everywhere, every shape and size. I find myself semi-hard most of the time, cursing myself for a dirty old man. Not a brassiere to be seen, nipples poking out at the world. Jeezus, pleeze-us. Back in my day, a woman out in public like that would have been arrested and given a sanity hearing.
-
Andy Dufresne: Dear Red, If you’re reading this, you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don’t you? I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I’ll keep an eye out for you and the chessboard ready. Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.
-
Red: Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific. Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear the stuff he pulled. Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
-
Red: All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole so maybe they’d send me back. Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me. A promise I made to Andy.
-
Fat Ass: You don’t understand, I’m not supposed to be here!
Captain Hadley: I’m not gonna to count to three. I’m not even gonna count to one. You will shut the FUCK up or I’ll sing you a lullaby!
-
Prisoner: When do we eat?
Captain Hadley: You eat when we say you eat. You shit when we say you shit. You piss when we say you piss. You got that, you maggot dick motherfucker?
-
Warden Samuel Norton: Do you enjoy working in the laundry?
Andy Dufresne: No sir, not especially.
-
Red: You’re gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent, you know that? Heywood, what you in here for?
Heywood: Didn’t do it. Lawyer fucked me.
-
Fat Ass: I don’t belong here! I want to go home! I want my mother!
Another Prisoner: I had your mother, she wasn’t that great!
-
Warden Samuel Norton: The roof of the license-plate factory needs resurfacing. I need a dozen volunteers for a week’s work. As you know, special detail carries with it special privledges.
Red: It was outdoor detail - and May is one damn fine month to be working outdoors.
-
Captain Hadley: What the Christ is this happy horseshit?
Prisoner: Hey, he took the Lord’s name in vain! I’m tellin’ the warden!
Captain Hadley: You’ll be tellin’ the warden about my baton up your ass!