All Quotes

"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 damn poster. Like I said, in prison, a man will do almost 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 man's 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, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific. Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear, the stuff he pulled... 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 now that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."

"I like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, was how the hell that Andy Dufrense ever got the best of him."

"There's harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do in remorse is to think a way to break my parole, so they may send me back. Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. 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."

"I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is 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!"

"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."

"If you wanna indulge in this fantasy, that's your business. Don't make it mine. This meeting is over."

"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] Give him another month to think about it."

"I want him found. NOT TOMORROW, NOT AFTER BREAKFAST! NOW!"

"This is a conspiracy. That's what it is. One... BIG... DAMN CONSPIRACY! AND EVERYONE'S IN ON IT! Including her!"

"[in a letter to Red after being released on parole] Dear fellas, I can't believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. The parole board got me into this halfway house called "The Brewer" and a job bagging groceries at the Foodway. It's hard work and I try to keep up, but my hands hurt most of the time. I don't think the store manager likes me very much. Sometimes after work, I go to the park and feed the birds. I keep thinking Jake might just show up and say hello, but he never does. I hope wherever he is, he's doin' okay and makin' new friends. I have trouble sleepin' at night. I have bad dreams like I'm falling. I wake up scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I am. Maybe I should get me a gun and rob the Foodway so they'd send me home. I could shoot the manager while I was at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I'm too old for that sort of nonsense any more. I don't like it here. I'm tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old crook like me. P.S: Tell Heywood I'm sorry I put a knife to his throat. No hard feelings. Brooks."

"His Judgement Cometh and that Right Soon.…"

"Morgan Freeman - Ellis Boyd"

"Bob Gunton - Warden Samuel Norton"

"Mark Rolston - Bogs Diamond"

"James Whitmore - Brooks Hatlen"

"Tim Robbins - Andy Dufresne"

"You humans are at least aware of that supreme paradox—that free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group—although you can’t work with it."

"Would he grow up to be Maker, Taker, or Faker?"

"Okay, I grant you the provisional status of human beings. Let’s deal."

"In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a glass, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he—and his goofball customers—believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased. Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again."

"I mean, progress is something with no pity and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew and spits out things you can’t understand and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money. What the hell is the sense of progress anyway?"

"“You know,” he said with a dangerous high note in his voice, “in all the nine years the prayers never stopped rising from that filthy little cell. For the first three years we prayed that someone would depose El Supremo. For approximately the next three years Mary prayed constantly that my faith in God would return. Then, for about a year I prayed to I-don’t-know-who that Mary would live. And after malaria took her, I spent my time praying to anyone who would listen for a chance to kill El Supremo with my own hands.”"

"Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other."

"She was pretty enough to make a preacher kick a hole in a stained-glass window."

"A man should live forever, or die trying."

"Tom said what struck him was how little progress churches have made in two hundred years toward convincing people that the unknown is not by definition evil."

"The prime datum of the Universe is that life survives by eating life, and no other way. The expense of eating is, in great part, the resistance the second life offers to being eaten."

"You can show a dozen guys murderin’ each other on TV but you can’t ever show two people making love. The naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman."

"Next morning I decided that hangovers are like sex—the second time isn’t quite as painful. If the analogy held, by tomorrow I’d be enjoying it."

"If we have to, we can all go to Hell together—maybe there’s a group rate."

"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy."

"“To all the Callahan's Places there ever were or ever will be,” Spider Robinson says, “whatever they may be called—and to all the merry maniacs and happy fools who are fortunate enough to stumble into one: may none of them arrive too late!”"

"There are basically three kinds of prostitute: street hooker, call girl, and house whore. Each kind is convinced that the other two are the lowest of the low."

"This is a House of healthy repute—no sleaze, fleas or social disease."

"Lady Sally does not permit any kind of contempt here. Not even self-contempt. Maybe especially not self-contempt. Art with contempt in it is always sour."

"If you’ve lived a bad life, they send you to Hell. But if you’ve been truly wicked, they give you a tour of Heaven first…."

"Don’t waste time blaming the bull if you can’t make it moo."

"As the poet tells us: once a king, always a king—but once a night is often sufficient."

"Oh, any bordello hears secrets, by definition: if our culture were not so sick that natural healthy urges are deadly secrets, there would be little need for bordellos. Father Newman suggested once, only half kidding, that we artists—that all prostitutes—function rather like priests for people who feel more natural confessing their sins while naked."

"Maybe I’m being illogical. I like word games, anagrams, palindromes, verbal puzzles: why are they okay and straight puns abhorrent? I think because in a straight pun, all the cleverness and wit has been used to poke a hole through the very idea of language, the possibility of communicating unambiguously with words—and that’s too dismaying to be funny to me."

"Take it from your Aunt Maureen: if there is any way you can arrange your affairs so as to avoid dropping into whorehouse garbage from a great height, naked in February, then that is almost certainly the course your life should take."

"My father used to say that you couldn’t trust Soviet technology—unless it was a weapon. “Paranoids,” he said, “can be relied on to make the best weapons.”"

"An unkind God gave us more tender places than He gave us hands to cover them."

"Please, dear. Vengeance is counterproductive. Not to mention the fact that it gets your soul all sticky."

"The Professor had come back from the Infinite. His eyes unrolled, his shoulders slumped slightly, and he acquired a wistful smile, as of one leaving Paradise to attend a sales convention in Columbus, Ohio."

"“Any time you offer your honor, I will gladly honor your offer.” “‘—and all night long it was on ’er and off ’er,’” Mary said."

"He stroked my hair. “But don’t worry. To coin a phrase, I have a plan.”"

"It is relatively foolproof—but you’re right, I forgot to make it moronproof."