[
Red places his bet on Andy.]
Red: That tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass.
Red narrating: Prison life consists of routine, and then more routine.
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.
Rednarating: 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: Easy peasy japanesey.
Hadley: If I hear as much as a mouse fart in here every one of you will visit the infirmary.
Prosecutor: And that also is very convenient, isn't it, Mr. Dufresne?
Andy Dufresne: Since I am innocent of this crime, I find it decidedly INCONVENIENT that the gun was never found.
Hadley: The government reaches inside your shirt and squeezes until your tit turns purple.
Hadley: What is your malfunction, you fat barrel of monkey spunk?
Red: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Red narrating: 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... and those bars slam home...that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.
Red narrating: These walls are kind of funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways
Red narrating: His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound.
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 better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't 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.
[
On playing opera records in the prison.]
Andy Dufresne: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's a - there's a - there's something inside that's yours, that they can't touch.
Andy Dufresne: That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you.
Andy Dufresne: 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 Dufresne: 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 narrating: Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
Red narrating: Forty years I been asking permission to piss. I can't squeeze a drop without say-so.
Red reading a note left by Andy: Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
Fat Prisoner: I'm not supposed to be here! I want to go home! I want my ma!
Another Prisoner: Yeah, I had your momma, she wasn't that great!
Hadley: What the Christ is this happy horseshit?
Prisoner: Hey, he took the Lord's name in vain! I'm tellin' the warden!
Hadley: You'll be tellin' the warden about my baton up your ass!
Captain Hadley to Andrew Dufresne: You're gonna look real funny sucking my dick with no teeth.
Red narrating: 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.
Red narrating: 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 forty-nine 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.
Captain Hadley: Drink up while it's cold, ladies.
Red narrating: The collosal prick even managed to sound magnanimous.
Red narrating: 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.
Red: Makin' yourself some friends, Andy.
Andy: I wouldn't say "friends". I'm a convicted murderer who provides sound financial planning.
Boggs: Now, I'm gonna open my fly and you're gonna swallow what I give ya. And when you swallow mine you 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 crow bar.
Boggs: Where do you get this shit?
Andy: I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?
Warden: He vanished like a fart in the wind.
[
Andy has asked Red to procure Rita Hayworth.]
Andy Dufresne: Can you get her?
Red: It'll take a few weeks.
Andy Dufresne: Weeks?
Red: Well yeah, Andy. I don't have her stuffed down my pants right now, sorry to say, but relax, I'll get her.
[
Watching Rita Hayworth in "Gilda" (qv)]
Red: I love when she does that shit with her hair.
Andy: Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Floyd: Red, I do believe you're talking out of your ass.
Red: Rehabilitated? Now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.
Parole official: 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 tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?
Parole official: 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 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: 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.
Red narrating: I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it 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.