The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Poster

Morgan Freeman: Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding

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Quotes 

  • Red : [narrating]  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.

  • Andy Dufresne : [referring to Andy using an alias to launder money for the warden]  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]  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.

  • Red : [narrating]  Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

  • 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.

    1967 Parole Hearings 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?

    1967 Parole Hearings Man : Well, are you?

    Red : There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, 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 to 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.

  • [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.

  • Red : [to Andy]  Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

  • Andy Dufresne : 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 Dufresne : Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.

    Red : Forget?

    Andy Dufresne : 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're you talking about?

    Andy Dufresne : Hope.

  • Red : [narrating]  Forty years I been asking permission to piss. I can't squeeze a drop without say-so.

  • Red : [after being denied parole as he expected]  Same old shit, different day.

  • Red : 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.

  • Andy Dufresne : What about you? What are you in here for?

    Red : Murder, same as you.

    Andy Dufresne : Innocent?

    Red : [shakes his head]  Only guilty man in Shawshank.

  • Red : [narrating, referring to the warden committing suicide]  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.

  • Heywood : The Count of Monte Crisco...

    Floyd : That's "Cristo" you dumb shit.

    Heywood : ...by Alexandree Dumb-ass. Dumb-ass.

    Andy Dufresne : Dumb-ass? "Dumas". You know what it's about? You'll like it, it's about a prison break.

    Red : We oughta file that under "Educational" too, oughten we?

  • Andy Dufresne : [in a letter to Red]  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?

    Red : Zihuatanejo.

    Andy Dufresne : 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 : [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 : [referring to the possibility of Andy committing suicide]  I don't know; every man has his breaking point.

  • 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 remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine 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 goddamn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he'd been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guards 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.

  • Andy Dufresne : I have no enemies here.

    Red : Yeah? Wait a while. Word gets around. The Sisters have taken quite a likin' to you. Especially Bogs.

    Andy Dufresne : I don't suppose it would help if I told them that I'm not homosexual.

    Red : Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.

  • Red : [narrating]  Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Andy Dufresne... who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne... headed for the Pacific.

  • 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.

  • Andy Dufresne : Red. If you ever get out of here, do me a favor.

    Red : Sure, Andy. Anything.

    Andy Dufresne : There's a big hayfield up near Buxton. You know where Buxton is?

    Red : Well, there's... there's a lot of hayfields up there.

    Andy Dufresne : One in particular. It's got a long rock wall with 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. At the base of that wall, you'll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. Piece of black, volcanic glass. There's something buried under it I want you to have.

    Red : What, Andy? What's buried under there?

    Andy Dufresne : [turns to walk away]  You'll have to pry it up... to see.

  • Red : [narrating]  There's 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, 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.

  • Andy Dufresne : You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?

    Red : No.

    Andy Dufresne : 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 : [narrating, referring to Andy]  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.

  • 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.

  • Captain Hadley : Dufresne!

    [to Dekins] 

    Captain Hadley : That's him. That's the one.

    Guard Dekins : I'm Dekins. I was thinking about setting up some kind of trust fund for my kids' educations.

    Andy Dufresne : Oh, I see. Well, why don't we have a seat and talk it over. Brooks, do you have a piece of paper and a pencil? Thanks. So, Mr. Dekins...

    Brooks : [at lunchtime to the other prisoners]  And then Andy says, "Mr. Dekins, do you want your sons to go to Harvard... or Yale?"

    Floyd : He didn't say that!

    Brooks : God is my witness! Dekins just looked at him a second and then he laughed himself silly and afterwards he actually shook Andy's hand.

    Heywood : My ass.

    Brooks : Shook his hand! I near soiled myself, I mean all Andy needed was a suit and a tie and a little jiggly hula gal on his desk and he woulda been *Mister* Dufresne, if you please.

    Red : Making a few friends, huh Andy?

    Andy Dufresne : I wouldn't say friends. I'm a convicted murderer who provides sound financial planning - it's a wonderful pet to have.

  • Red : Get busy living or get busy dying. That's goddamn right!

  • Warden Samuel Norton : [after Andy escapes]  Well?

    Red : Well what?

    Warden Samuel Norton : I see you two all the time, you're thick as thieves, you are. He musta said *something*.

    Red : No sir, Warden. Not a word.

    Warden Samuel Norton : [frustrated]  Lord, it's a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind! Nothing left but some damn rocks on the windowsill. And that cupcake on the wall! Let's ask her, maybe she knows.

    Warden Samuel Norton : [to poster]  What say you there, fuzzy-britches? Feel like talking? Aw, guess not. Why should she be any different?

    [hefting one of Andy's rocks] 

    Warden Samuel Norton : This is a conspiracy, that's what it is.

    [throwing rocks] 

    Warden Samuel 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; they look through it in shock] 

  • Red : [narrating]  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.

  • Red : [narrating]  Two things never happened again after that. The Sisters never laid a finger on Andy again... and Bogs 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.

  • [Andy has asked Red to procure Rita Hayworth] 

    Andy Dufresne : Can you get her?

    Red : Take a few weeks.

    Andy Dufresne : 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!

  • [after Brooks held a knife to Heywood's throat] 

    Andy Dufresne : 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.

  • Andy Dufresne : I understand you're a man who knows how to get things.

    Red : I'm known to locate certain things from time to time.

  • 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 Williams : Hey, c'mon, old boys! You're movin' like molasses! Makin' me look bad!

    Red : [narrating]  We liked him immediately.

  • Red : Ever bother you?

    Andy Dufresne : 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.

  • 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 : [Narrating]  There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I'm the guy who can get if 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.

  • 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 '47, what is that... 19 years.

  • [watching Rita Hayworth in Gilda] 

    Red : This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.

  • Red : [narrating]  His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound.

  • [Tommy and Red are talking about Andy] 

    Tommy Williams : What's he in here for, anyway?

    Red : Murder.

    Tommy Williams : [Impressed]  The hell you say!

    Red : Yeah, you wouldn't think it to look at the guy. Caught his wife in bed with some golf pro. Greased 'em both.

    [pause, Tommy looks shocked] 

    Red : What? What is it?

    [cut to a later scene with Andy present] 

    Tommy Williams : About four years ago I was up in Thomaston on a two to three stretch. Stole a car. It was a dumb-fuck thing to do. About six months left to go, I get a new cellmate in. Elmo Blatch. Big, twitchy fucker. Kind of roomie you pray you don't get, you know what I'm sayin'? Six to twelve, armed burglary. Said he'd pulled hundreds of jobs - hard to believe, high-strung as he was, you cut a loud fart he'd jump three feet in the air. Talked *all the time*, too, that's the other thing, he never shut up. Places he'd been, jobs he'd pulled, women he fucked. Even, people he killed. People, gave him shit. That's how he put it. So one night like a joke, I say to him, I say, "Yeah, Elmo, who'd you kill?" So he says:

    Elmo Blatch : [in flashback]  I got me this job one time, busing tables at a country club, so I could case all these big rich pricks who come in. So I pick out this guy, go in one night, and do his place. He wakes up, and gives me shit, so I killed him. Him and this tasty bitch he was with!

    [laughs] 

    Elmo Blatch : And that's the best part. She's fuckin' this prick golf pro but she's married to some other guy! Some hot-shot banker! And he's the one they pinned it on!

  • 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 colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous.

  • Red : [narrating]  The following April Andy did tax returns for half the guards at Shawshank. Year after that he did them all including the warden's. Year after that they rescheduled the start of the intra-mural season to coincide with tax season. The guards on the opposing teams all remembered to bring their W2s.

    Andy Dufresne : So Moresby prison issued you your gun, but you actually had to pay for it.

    Moresby Batter : Damn right. The holster too.

    Andy Dufresne : You see, that's tax deductible, you can write that off.

  • Andy Dufresne : Not me. I didn't shoot my wife, and I didn't shoot her lover. Whatever mistakes I made, I've paid for them and then some. That hotel, that boat... I don't think that's too much to ask.

    Red : I don't think you oughta be doin' this to yourself, Andy. This is just shitty pipe dreams. I mean Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is.

    Andy Dufresne : 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.

    [stands up and walks away a few steps] 

    Red : [stands up, concerned]  Andy!

    Andy Dufresne : Red, if you ever get out of here, do me a favor.

    Red : Sure, Andy. Anything.

    Andy Dufresne : There's a big hayfield up near Buxton. You know where Buxton is?

    Red : Well, there's, there's a lot of hayfields up there.

    Andy Dufresne : One in particular. It's got a long rock wall, with 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.

    [he steps close, voice dropping] 

    Andy Dufresne : Promise me, Red, if you ever get out, find that spot. At 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 : What, Andy? What's buried under there?

    Andy Dufresne : [walking away]  You'll have to pry it up, to see.

  • Red : [narrating]  I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that - but prison is no fairy-tale world. He never said who did it, but we all knew. Things went on like that for awhile - 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. I do believe those first two years were the worst for him, and I also believe that if things had gone on that way, this place would have got the best of him.

  • Red : [referring to Andy]  The man likes to play chess; let's get him some rocks.

  • Red : Well, if it was a toothbrush I wouldn't ask questions, I'd just quote a price, but then a toothbrush is a non-lethal object, isn't it?

  • Red : [to Andy, wondering when he'll be granted parole]  One day, when I have a long gray beard and two or three marbles rollin' around upstairs, they'll let me out.

  • [Red places his bet on Andy] 

    Red : That tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass.

  • [Andy is comforting a sobbing Brooks after he held a knife to Heywood's neck] 

    Heywood : Hey, what about me? Crazy old fool goddamn near cut my throat!

    Red : Aw shit Heywood, you've had worse from shaving! What the hell'd you say to set him off anyway?

    Heywood : I didn't do nothin'! I come down here to say fare thee well! Didn't you hear? His parole come through!

  • Andy Dufresne : I wonder if you might get me a rock hammer

    Red : What is it? And why?

    Andy Dufresne : A rock hammer is about six or seven inches long looks like a miniature Pickaxe

    Red : Pickaxe?

    Andy Dufresne : For rocks.

    Red : For rocks?

    Andy Dufresne : I'm from a rock hound at least I was in my old life I'd like to be again on a limited basis

    Red : Or maybe you'd like to sink your into somebody's skull

    Andy Dufresne : No I have no enemies here

    Red : No? Wait a while word gets around full queers take by force that's all they want or understand if I were you I'd grow eyes in the back of my head

    Andy Dufresne : Thanks for the advice

    Red : That's free, you understand my concern?

    Andy Dufresne : If there's any trouble I won't use the rock hammer

    Red : I guess you'd want to escape? Tunnel under the wall

    [Andy starts laughing] 

    Red : did I miss something? What's so funny?

    Andy Dufresne : You'll understand when you see the rock hammer

    Red : What's an item like this usually go for?

    Andy Dufresne : Seven dollars in any rock and gem shop

    Red : My normal marker is twenty percent but this is a specialty item risk goes up price goes up let's make it an even ten bucks

    Andy Dufresne : Ten it is

    Red : Waste of money if you ask me

    Andy Dufresne : Why's that?

    Red : Folks around this joint love surprise inspections if they find you're going to lose it, if they do catch you with it you don't know me, you mention my name we never do business again not for a shoe lace or a stick of gum you got that?

    Andy Dufresne : I understand thank you Mr.?

    Red : "Red", my name's Red

  • Red : [narrating]  But then, in the spring of 1949, the powers that be decided that...

    Warden Samuel Norton : [Addressing the inmates in the courtyard]  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 privileges.

    Red : [narrating]  It was outdoor detail - and May is one damn fine month to be working outdoors.

  • [Playing checkers] 

    Red : King me.

    Andy Dufresne : Chess. Now there's a game of kings.

    Red : What?

    Andy Dufresne : Civilized. Strategic...

    Red : ...and a total fuckin' mystery. I hate it.

  • Red : [after lights out and the guards walk out of the main area] 

    [Narrating] 

    Red : I remember my first night. Seems like a long time ago.

    Prisoner : Yoo-hoo. Big fish. Fish, fish, fish, fishie?

    [the others start talking quietly, trying to taunt the newcomers] 

    Another Prisoner : Poke your ass out here! Give me a first look!

    Another Prisoner : Shhh. Keep it down.

    Red : [Narrating]  The boys always go fishing with first-timers, and they don't stop until they reel one in.

    Heywood : [Quietly]  Hey, fat ass. Fat ass. Talk to me boy.

    [Cut to a shot of him quietly sobbing] 

    Heywood : I know you're there. I can hear you breathing. Now, don't you listen to these nit-wits, ya hear me? This place ain't so bad. Tell you what. I'll introduce you around. Make you feel right at home. I know a couple of big bull queers that would just love to make your acquaintance, especially that big white mushy butt of yours.

    Fat Ass : [Cracks]  God! I don't belong here!

    Inmates : We have a winner!

    Fat Ass : I wanna go home!

    Heywood : [Announcing]  And it's fat ass by a nose!

    [Starts the chant] 

    Heywood : Fresh fish! Fresh fish!

    Inmates : [Chant and clap]  Fresh fish! Fresh fish! Fresh fish!

    Fat Ass : [Comes up to the bars]  I don't belong here! I wanna go home! I want my momma!

    Prisoner : I had your mother! She wasn't that great!

    Captain Hadley : [Storms in with his guys]  What the Christ is this happy horse shit?

    Another Prisoner : Hey, he took the Lord's name in vain, I'm telling the warden!

    Captain Hadley : You'll be telling him about my baton up your ass!

    Fat Ass : [as Hadley comes up to his cell]  You gotta let me out! You gotta!

    Captain Hadley : What is your major malfunction, you fat barrel of monkey spunk?

    Fat Ass : Please! I ain't supposed to be here! Not me!

    Captain Hadley : [Not one ounce of sympathy]  I ain't going to count to three! I'm not even going to count to one! You will shut the FUCK up, or I'll sing you a lullaby!

    Heywood : [Under his breath]  Shut up, man. Shut up.

    Fat Ass : [Crying and pleading]  Please! There's been a mistake! You don't understand! I'm not supposed to be here!

    Captain Hadley : [to his men]  Open that cell!

    Prisoner : Me neither! They run this place like a fuckin' prison!

    Captain Hadley : [Once his cell door is open, he drags him out and beats him severely in the torso and head with his baton, then knocks him out with one last kick to his head] 

    [to the rest of the inmates] 

    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!

    [Quietly to his men] 

    Captain Hadley : Call the trustees to take that tub of shit down to the infirmary.

    Red : [narrating]  His first night in Shawshank, Andy cost me two packs of smokes. He never made a sound.

  • Bank Manager : I must say, I'm sorry to be losing your business. I hope you'll enjoy living abroad.

    Andy Dufresne : Thank you. I'm sure I will.

    Bank Teller : Here's your cashier's check, sir. Will there be anything else?

    Andy Dufresne : Please. Would you add this to your outgoing mail?

    Bank Teller : I'd be happy to.

    Andy Dufresne : Good day, sir.

    Bank Manager : Good day.

    Red : Mr. Stevens visited nearly a dozen banks in the Portland area that morning. All told, he blew town with more than $370,000 of Warden Norton's money. Severance pay for nineteen years.

  • Red : Thirty years. Jesus, when you say it like that...

    Andy Dufresne : ...You wonder where it went.

  • [Tommy receives a letter from the Board of Education] 

    Red : You gonna open it, or stand there with your thumb up your butt?

    Tommy Williams : Thumb up my butt sounds better.

  • Red : He's got his fingers in a lot of pies, from what I hear.

    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.

    Red : Yeah, but the problem with having all that money is sooner or later, you're gonna have to explain where it came from.

    Andy Dufresne : Well, that's where I come in. 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...

    Red : Clean as a virgin's honeypot, huh?

    Andy Dufresne : Cleaner. By the time Norton retires, I'll have made him a millionaire.

  • Heywood : Red! I got one! I got one, look!

    Ernie : Heywood, that isn't soapstone.

    Floyd : And it ain't alabaster, either!

    Heywood : Well what the hell is it then?

    Red : It's a horse apple.

    Heywood : Bullshit...

    Red : No, horseshit! Petrified.

    Heywood : [breaks it open]  Oh, Jesus... Oh, man...

  • Warden Samuel Norton : [as Mozart music is playing on the phonograph, the Warden comes to bang on the door]  Open the door. Open it up! Dufresne, open this door! Turn that off!

    [Andy acts like he is going to do as he says] 

    Warden Samuel Norton : I am warning you Dufresne, TURN THAT OFF!

    [Andy turns up the volume instead, so Hadley comes to the door] 

    Captain Hadley : Dufresne...

    [taps on the door with the club] 

    Captain Hadley : ... come on down.

    [Andy does nothing, so Hadley smashes the screen on the door, unlocks it, and comes in the room] 

    Red : [narrating]  Andy got two weeks in the hole for that little stunt.

    Captain Hadley : [turns off the phonograph]  On your feet.

  • Red : [repeated lines to the parole board during his hearing when asked if he feels rehabilitated]  Oh yes sir, absolutely sir, I mean I've learned my lesson. I can honestly say I'm a "changed man", no longer a danger to society here, and that's the God's honest truth.

  • Red : Andy was as good as his word. He wrote two letters a week instead of one. In 1959 the state senate finally clued in to the fact they couldn't buy him off with just a two-hundred-dollar check. Appropriations committee voted an annual payment of five hundred dollars just to shut him up. And you'd be amazed how far Andy could stretch it.

  • Andy Dufresne : 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, the way I am.

    Red : That don't make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe. Feel bad about it if you want to, but you *didn't* pull the trigger.

    Andy Dufresne : No, I didn't. Somebody else did. And I wound up in here. Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. Has to land on somebody. I was in the path of the tornado. I just never expected the storm to last as long as it has.

  • Red : I'm tellin' you, the guy's... he's talkin' funny. We better keep an eye on him.

    Snooze : That's fine during the day but at night he's got that cell all to himself.

    Heywood : [remembering something]  Oh lord...

    Red : What?

    Heywood : Andy come down to the loading dock today. He asked me for a length of rope.

    Red : Rope?

    Heywood : [meaningfully]  Six feet long.

    Snooze : And you gave it to him?

    Heywood : Sure I did, why wouldn't I?

    Floyd : Jesus, Heywood!

    Heywood : [upset]  How was I supposed to know?

    Floyd : Remember Brooks Hatlen?

    Snooze : No. Andy'd never do that. Never.

    Red : I don't know. Every man's got his breaking point.

  • Floyd : Takin' bets today, Red?

    Red : Smokes or coins, better's choice.

    Floyd : Smokes. Put me down for two.

    Red : All right, who's your horse?

    Floyd : That little sack o' shit. Eighth, eighth from the front. He'll be first.

    Heywood : Aw, bullshit. I'll call that action. You out some smokes, son, let me tell you!

    Floyd : Well, Heywood, you so smart, you call it!

    Heywood : I'll take the chubby fat-ass there. Fifth from the front. Put me down for a quarter deck.

  • Andy Dufresne : [repeated lines to each other]  I understand you're a man who knows how to get things.

    Red : [repeated lines to each other]  I'm known to locate certain things from time to time.

  • Red : They make you walk through Shashank as naked as the day you are born nearly blind from all that sulfur shit they put on you and then you get to you're cell and those bars slam shut and that's when you know this is all for real. and you got nothing but all the time in the world to think about what you done.

See also

Release Dates | Official Sites | Company Credits | Filming & Production | Technical Specs


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