The
Shawshank Redemption
Quotes
(Page 3)
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Heywood: Red? You saying Andy's innocent? I mean for real innocent?Red: Yeah, it looks that way.
Heywood: Sweet Jesus. How long's he been in here?
Red: Since forty seven, what is that...nineteen years.
Andy: I'm done. Everything stops. Get someone else to run your scams.
Warden Norton: [icy] Nothing stops. Nothing...or you will do the hardest time there is. No more protection from the guards. I'll pull you out of that one-bunk Hilton and cast you down with the Sodomites. You'll think you've been fucked by a train! And the library? Gone... sealed off, brick-by-brick. We'll have us a little book barbecue in the yard. They'll see the flames for miles. We'll dance around it like wild Injuns! You understand me? Catching my drift?...Or am I being obtuse?
[to Hadley]
Warden Norton: Give him another month to think about it.
Andy: My wife used to say I'm a hard man to know. Like a closed book. Complained about it all the time. 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.
Red: That don't make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe.
Andy: Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. It's got to land on somebody. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has.
[glances to Red]
Andy: Think you'll ever get out of here?
Red: Sure. When I got a long white beard and about three marbles left rolling around upstairs.
Andy: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.
Red: I don't think you ought to be doing this to yourself, Andy. This is just shitty pipedreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is.
Andy: Yeah, right. That's the way it is. It's down there and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.
Red: [narrating] In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. 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 used to think it would take six-hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big god-damned poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall through the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, he decided he had been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn't notice. Neither did I...I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? 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: [narrating] Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
Warden Norton: I want him found. Not tomorrow, not after breakfast, NOW.
Warden Norton: Lord! It's a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind!
Warden
Norton: This is a conspiracy, that's what it is. [throwing rocks]
Warden Norton: One...big...damn conspiracy! And everyone's in on it, including HER!
[throws a rock at the poster, the rock goes right through it and they hear it clattering. Norton puts his arm through the torn poster and rips it away from the wall, revealing Andy's escape tunnel]
[Warden Norton finds the bible in his safe after Andy escapes and finds the message Andy left for him]
Andy: Dear Warden, You were right. Salvation lay within.
[Norton flips through a couple of pages to find the outline of the rock hammer that was hidden in the Book of Exodus within the Bible, and then drops it on the floor in shock]
[After Warden Norton shoots himself in his office]
Red: [narrating] I'd like to think that 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.
Red: [narrating] 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. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
[1967 Parole Hearings]
Man: Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?
Red: Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.
Man: Well, it means that you're ready to rejoin society...
Red: I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?
Man: Well, are you?
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.
Red: [narrating] Forty years I been asking permission to piss. I can't squeeze a drop without say-so.
Red: [narrating] There is a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole. 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.
Andy: [in letter to Red] Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
[last lines]
Red: [narrating] I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's 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.
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Total
Quotes: 61
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