Morgan Freeman credited as playing...
Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding
- 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 laughs]
- 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: 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, 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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] 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.
- 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.