The Shawshank Redemption quotes

View Quote There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I'm the guy who can get it 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.

View Quote Lord! It's a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind. Nothin' left but some damn rocks on the window sill and that cupcake on the wall. [He gestures toward the poster of Raquel Welch hanging on the cell wall.] Let's ask her. Maybe she knows. What say there, fussy-britches. Feel like talkin'? Oh, guess not. Why should she be any different? This is a conspiracy. That's what this is. It's one big damn conspiracy. And everyone's in on it. Including her!

View Quote All I ask is three beers a piece for each of my co-workers...I think a man workin' outdoors feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds. That's only my opinion.

View Quote He's a phantom, an apparition, second cousin to Harvey the rabbit. I conjured him out of thin air. He doesn't exist, except on paper...Mr. Stephens has a birth certificate, driver's license, social security number...

View Quote It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. Open up a little hotel right on the beach. Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new. Take my guests out charter fishing...You know, in a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things.

View Quote His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound.

View Quote 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 a wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.

View Quote [about the warden] I like to think 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.

View Quote Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means...I know what you think it means. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word so that 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?...There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. And 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. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. 'Rehabilitated?' That's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.

View Quote 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.

View Quote D.A.: We have the accused at the scene of the crime. We have footprints, tire tracks. We have bullets strewn on the ground which bear his fingerprints. A broken bourbon bottle, likewise with fingerprints. And most of all, we have a beautiful young woman and her lover lying dead in each other's arms. They had sinned. But was their crime so great as to merit a death sentence?...A revolver holds six bullets, not eight. I submit that this was not a hot-blooded crime of passion. That, at least, could be understood if not condoned. No - this was revenge of a much more brutal and cold blooded nature. Consider this. Four bullets per victim. Not six shots fired but eight. That means that he fired the gun empty and then stopped to reload so that he could shoot each of them again. An extra bullet per lover, right in the head.

View Quote Boggs: Now, I'm gonna open my fly and you're gonna swallow what I give ya to swallow. And after 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: 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 crowbar.
Boggs: Where do you get this shit?
Andy: I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant ****?

View Quote Mr. Hadley, do you trust your wife? [Hadley threatens to throw Andy off the roof] Because if you do trust her, there's no reason you can't keep that thirty-five thousand...If you want to keep all that money, give it to your wife. The IRS allows a one-time only gift to your spouse for up to sixty thousand dollars...tax-free...you do need someone to set up the tax-free gift for you, and it'll cost you, a lawyer for example...I suppose I could set it up for you. That would save you some money. You get the forms, I'll prepare them for you, nearly free of charge.

View Quote 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...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...by the time Norton retires, I will have made him a millionaire.

View Quote 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.