Listosaurus Rex

I watched The Shawshank Redemption for about the fifth or sixth time last night, and I still love it. What a good movie. That ending never fails to pump me up.

I’ve decided that the best part of the movie is the script. It ranks right up there with Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, and Annie Hall as my favorite scripts ever. There are so many brilliant moments in the script.

This got me thinking. What exactly are the best moments of this exceptional script?

After several hours of combing through the movie and pulling out the best moments, it is my pleasure to present what I believe are the greatest quotes from the script.

Let it be known that this post is a SPOILER WARNING! If you haven’t seen Shawshank, don’t read this post. In fact, don’t read anything else about the movie. Just go see it as soon possible, it’s a mighty fine movie.

Without further ado, I present my twenty-five favorite quotes and exchanges from The Shawshank Redemption.

(n) = narration

25.

Red (n): 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.

24.

Andy: How could you be so obtuse?

23.

Board member: 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.
Board member: 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. Politicians word, so young fellows 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?
Board member: Well, are you?
Red: There’s not a day goes by that I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here and 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. Try and talk some sense into him. Tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone, and this old man is all that is left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? That’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. ‘Cause, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit

22.

Warden: Lord, it’s a miracle! A man up and vanished like a fart in the wind.

21.

Red: It’s just shitty pipe dreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there, and you’re in here.

20.

District Attorney: And that, also, is very convenient. Isn’t it, Mr. Dufresne?
Andy: Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, I find it decidedly inconvenient that the gun was never found.

19.

Red: I’m telling you, these walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.

18.

Red (n): 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.

17.

Red (n): Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time.

16.

Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.

15.

Heywood: Count of Monte Crisco.
Floyd: It’s Cristo, you dumb shit.
Heywood: By Alexan-dree Dumm-ass. Dumbass?
Andy: Dumm-ass? Dumas. You know what that’s about? You’ll like that, it’s about a prison break.
Red: We ought to file that under educational too, oughtn’t we?

14.

Red (n): And that’s how it came to pass that on the second last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ‘49 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 (n): The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. 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.
Heywood: Hey, want a cold one Andy?
Andy: No thanks, I gave up drinking.
Red (n): 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 just did it to feel normal again, if only for a short while.

13.

Andy: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy: They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.

12.

Red: They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they’re taking.

11.

Andy: So you don’t forget… forget that there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. It’s yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.
Red: Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea.
Andy: Like Brooks did?

10.

Andy: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.
Red: I’m known to locate certain things from time to time.

9.

Red (n): 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 when they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

8.

Brooks: Easy peezy Japanesey.

7.

The Warden: Salvation lies within.

6.

Red (n): Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine. Or maybe I just don’t want to. 500 yards. That’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.

5.

Red: This is wear she does that shit with her hair.

4.

Red (n): 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 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.

3.

Red: Same ol’ shit, different day.
2.

Andy: I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying.

1.

Red (n): 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.

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