The
Shawshank Redemption
Quotes
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[watching
Rita Hayworth in
Gilda] Red: This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.
Andy: Rita Hayworth. Can you get her?
Red: Take a few weeks.
Andy: Weeks?
Red: Well yeah, Andy. I don't have her stuffed down the front of my pants right now, I'm sorry to say, but I'll get her. Relax!
Boggs: Now, I'm gonna open my fly and you're gonna swallow what I give ya to swallow. And after you swallow mine you're gonna swallow Rooster's cause ya done broke his nose and I think he oughta have something to show for it.
Andy: Anything you put in my mouth you're gonna lose.
Boggs: Naw, you don't understand. You do that and I'll put all eight inches of steel in your ear.
Andy: All right. But you should know that sudden serious brain injury causes the victim to bite down hard. In fact, I hear the bite reflex is so strong they have to pry the victims jaws open with a crowbar.
Boggs: Where do you get this shit?
Andy: I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?
Red: [narrating] Two things never happened again after that. The Sisters never laid a finger on Andy again...and Boggs never walked again. They transferred him to a minimum security hospital upstate. To my knowledge, he lived out the rest of his days drinking his food through a straw.
[Playing checkers]
Red: King me.
Andy: Chess. Now there's a game of kings.
Red: What?
Andy: Civilized. Strategic...
Red: ...and a total fuckin' mystery. I hate it.
Andy: What about you? What are you in here for?
Red: Murder, same as you.
Andy: Innocent?
[shakes his head]
Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.
Warden Norton: I almost forgot.
[He reaches through the bars and returns the Bible to Andy.]
Warden Norton: I'd hate to deprive you of this. Salvation lies within.
Andy: I've been reassigned to you.
Brooks: I know, they told me. Ain't that a kick in the ass? Come on in, I'll give you the dime tour.
Brooks: Easy peasy Japanesey.
[after Brooks held a knife to Heywood's throat]
Andy: I just don't understand what happened in there.
Heywood: Old man's crazy as a rat in a tin shithouse, is what.
Red: Oh Heywood, that's enough out of you!
Ernie: I heard he had you shittin' in your pants!
Heywood: Fuck you!
Red: Would you knock it off? Brooks ain't no bug. He's just... just institutionalized.
Heywood: Institutionalized, my ass.
Red: 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. couldn't even get a library card if he applied. You see what I'm saying?
Floyd: Red, I do believe you're talking out of your ass.
Red: Believe what you want. These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
Heywood: Shit. I could never get like that.
Ernie: Oh yeah? Say that when you been here as long as Brooks has.
Red: Goddamn right. They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway.
Red: [narrating] 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 best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
Andy: I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company.
[points and taps his head]
Andy: It was in here.
[gestures over his heart]
Andy: And in here. That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you. Haven't you ever felt that way about music?
Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.
Andy: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy: Forget that there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside...that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.
Red: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It's got no place here. Better get used to the idea.
[1957 Parole Hearings]
Man #l: It says here you've served 30 years of a life sentence.
Man #2: You feel you've been rehabilitated?
Red: Yes sir, without a doubt. I can say I'm a changed man. No danger to society, that's the God's honest truth. Absolutely rehabilitated.
Red: Thirty years. Jesus. When you say it like that...
Andy: You wonder where it went. I wonder where ten years went.
Andy: If they ever try to trace any of those accounts, they're gonna end up chasing a figment of my imagination.
Red: Well, I'll be damned. Did I say you were good? Shit, you're a Rembrandt!
Andy: Yeah. 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: Ever bother you?
Andy: I don't run the scams Red, I just process the profits. Fine line, maybe, but I also built that library and used it to help a dozen guys get their high school diploma. Why do you think the warden lets me do all that?
Red: To keep you happy and doing the laundry. Money instead of sheets.
Andy: I work cheap. That's the trade-off.
Red: [narrating] Tommy Williams came to Shawshank in 1965 on a two-year stretch for B&E. That's breaking & entering to you. Cops caught him sneaking TV sets out the back door of a JC Penney. Young punk. Mr. Rock and Roll. Cocky as hell.
Tommy: Hey, c'mon, old boys! You're movin' like molasses! Makin' me look bad!
Red: [narrating] We liked him immediately.
[Tommy and Red are talking about Andy]
Tommy: What's he in here for, anyway?
Red: Murder.
Tommy: The hell you say!
Red: You wouldn't think, lookin' at him. Caught his wife in bed with some golf pro. Greased 'em both.
Warden Norton: What? What did you call me?
Andy: Obtuse. Is it deliberate?
Warden Norton: Son, you're forgetting yourself.
Andy: The country club will have his old time cards. Records, W-2s with his name on them. Sir, if I ever get out, I'd never mention what happens here. I'd be just as indictable as you for laundering that money.
[Norton slaps the table]
Warden Norton: Don't you ever mention money to me again, you sorry son of a bitch!Not in this room, not anywhere!
[Andy gets dragged away, kicking and screaming]
Andy: It's my life. Don't you understand? IT'S MY LIFE!
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Total
Quotes: 61
