Memorable Quotes From

Memorable Quotes from The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

[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.

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.

Warden Samuel Norton: Do you enjoy working in the laundry?
Andy Dufresne: No sir, not especially.

[Bogs sizes Andy up]
Boggs: Hey, anybody come at you yet? Anybody get to you yet?
[No answer]
Boggs: Hey, we all need friends in here. I could be a friend to you.
[Andy gets away]
Boggs: Hard to get. I like that...

Red: [narrating] But then, in the spring of 1949, the powers that be decided that...
Warden Samuel Norton: 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 privledges.
Red: [narrating] It was outdoor detail - and May is one damn fine month to be working outdoors.

[Andy after Warden Norton refuse to appeal his case]
Andy Dufresne: It's my life. Don't you understand? IT'S MY LIFE!

Andy Dufresne: I'm Andy Dufresne.
Red: [Tossing a baseball with Haywood] Wife-killin' banker. Tell me man, why did you do it?
Andy Dufresne: I didn't, since you asked.
Red: You're gonna right in here!
[to Haywood]
Red: Hey Haywood, what you're in here for?
Heywood: Didn't do it! Lawyer fucked me!
Red: See? Well, rumor's that you're a cold fish. You think your shit smells sweeter than most.
Andy Dufresne: What do you think?
Red: Well, to tell you the truth, I haven't made up my mind.
Andy Dufresne: I understand you're a man who knows how to get things.
Red: Yeah, I've been known to locate certain things from time to time.
Andy Dufresne: I was wondering if you can get me a rock hammer.
Red: A rock hammer?
Andy Dufresne: A rock hammer, its a bout 6 or 7 inches long. Sorta like a pick-ax.
Red: Pick-ax?
Andy Dufresne: For rocks.
[kneels down to pick up some rocks]
Andy Dufresne: Got some quartz, some shale, and some macha.
Red: So?
Andy Dufresne: I'm a rock hound. At least I was in my old life, I would like to be again on a limited basis.
Red: Or maybe you'd like to sink your toy into someone skull.
Andy Dufresne: No, I have no enemies here.
Red: Really? Wait a while. Word gets around. I've heard the Sister's have taken quite a liking to you... especially Bogs.
Andy Dufresne: Does it help to tell them that I'm not homosexual?
Red: Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.
[kneels down next to Andy]
Red: Bull queers take by force. It'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: Well, that's free. You understand my concern.
Andy Dufresne: Well, if it makes you feel better, I won't use the rock hammer then.

Andy Dufresne: Got some quartz, some shale, and some mica.

Red: The man likes to play chess; let's get him some rocks.

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.

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.

Brooks: Easy peasy japanesey.

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.

District Attorney: 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.

Captain Hadley: The government reaches inside your shirt and squeezes until your tit turns purple.

Captain 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: 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 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.

[on Red's harmonica playing]
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 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, and that there's something inside that they can't get to ,and that they can't touch. It's yours.
Red: What're you talking about?
Andy Dufresne: Hope.

Warden Samuel Norton: [after Andy escapes] I want him found. Not tomorrow, not after breakfast - *now*.

Andy Dufresne: That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you.

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 favourite 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 too. Five-Hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.

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: Does it 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.

Tommy Williams: I don't read so good.
Andy Dufresne: Well.
[pause]
Andy Dufresne: You don't read so *well*. Uh, we'll get to that.

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.

Andy Dufresne: Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And a good thing never dies.

Red: Everybody's innocent in here.
Andy Dufresne: What about you?
Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.

Heywood: [talking about Fat Ass] Hey Tyrell. You pulling infirmary duty this week?
Tyrell: [nods] Yep.
Heywood: How's that winning horse of mine doing?
Tyrell: Dead. Hadley busted up his head pretty good. Doc went home for the night. Poor bastard laid there till this morning. By then, there was nothing we could do.

Fat Ass: You don't understand! I don't belong here!
Inmates: Yeah, neither do I! They run this place like a fucking prision!

Warden Samuel Norton: Salvation lies within.

Andy Dufresne: [in letter to Red] Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Fat Ass: 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!

Captain Hadley: What the Christ is this happy horseshit?
Prisoner: Hey, he took the Lord's name in vain! I'm tellin' the warden!
Captain 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 Dufresne: I wouldn't say "friends". I'm a convicted murderer who provides sound financial planning.

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, let's take a seat and talk it over. Brooks do you have a piece of paper and a pencil? So. Mr Dekins.
Brooks: [at lunchtime to the other prisoners] And then Andy said "Mr Dekins, do you want your sons to go to Harvard or Yale?".
Floyd: You didn't say that?
Brooks: As 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. All he needed was a suit and a tie and a little jingly hula gal on his desk and he would've been Mr Dufresne.
Red: Making a few friends 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: [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 deductable, you can write that off.

Boggs: Now, I'm gonna open my fly and you're gonna swallow what I give ya to swallow. And when 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 Dufresne: 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 Dufresne: 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 Dufresne: I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?

Warden Samuel Norton: Lord! It's a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind!

[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.

[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 (1946)]
Red: I love when she does that shit with her hair.

Andy Dufresne: Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Floyd: Red, I do believe you're talking out of your ass.

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, 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.